Homeopathy

Homoeopathy is a pseudo-scientific method which is used for the treatment of nearly all illnesses. It was invented by the saxon doctor and occultist Samuel Hahnemann around the year 1800 and exists almost unchanged today. The homoeopathy relies on two general basic principles. One of them, known as the "law of similars", is "let like be cured by like." Inventor Hahnemann specified at that time that, according to the law of similars, every illness is cured by substances which cause similar symptoms when they are taken by a healthy patient. The other priciple is called potentization. The homoeopathic remedies shall work the more strongly the more they are diluted into solution according to a particular procedure. None of these two principles could be confirmed experimentally until now.

Homoeopathy believers are frequently, consciously or unconsciously, overall sceptical in relation to the scientific medicine: With the (mostly irrational) fear of the "harmful chemistry" a "nocebo effect" which impairs the effect of well approved conventional methods is connected inseparably.

Also see: Allopathy

Variants of homoeopathy

Different variants of the original classic homoeopathy have taken shape to Hahnemann in the course of the time. So one distinguishes low-potentizers from high-potentizers, monotherapists of polypragmatists, homoeopathic physiotherapists of anthroposophic homoeopaths, etc.

Classic homoeopathy is the form of the homoeopathy which strictly orientates itself at Samuel Hahnemann's teachings. According to Hahnemann only one single remedy at the time shall be given for all physical or intellectual illnesses. The classically working homoeopath is looking for the one of his opinion to suitable similar. The most well-known current representative is Georgos Vithoulkas.
Constitutional homoeopathy is the application of homoeopathic remedy mixtures due to an illness diagnosis. Also see: Constitutional homoeopathy
The clinical homoeopathy describes the application of homoeopathic remedies in so-called low-potencies (D1-D12) according to certain diagnoses.
Miasmatic homoeopathy describes different variants of the constitutional homoeopathy with the emphasis on the therapy of chronic illnesses under consideration of Hahneman's miasmatic theory.
Microimmunetherapy calls itself a method at which cytokines are potentized and given to sublingual. In doing so, it is posited by the suppliers that a high concentration of components of the immune system would lie under the tongue. The therapy is as of, aimed to modulate the immune system about the potentized effect of cytokines. Maurice Jenaer is regarded as a founder of the micro immune therapy. A supplier of microimmunal therapeutic agents is the enterprise Labo'Life which also has a patent on "specific nucleid acids". Details on effect and composition of the remedies are missing.
The biochemical homoeopathy refers to a homoeopathy variant at which nosodes and potentized poisons are used (Also see the Horvi-Enzyme-Therapy). The method is apparently only used by her inventress, the biochemist and non-medical practitioner Karin Lenger from Offenbach.
Newer interpretations and derivatives of the homoeopathy are in coming. Here, fluent transitions let themselves be seen towards faith-healing or an energy medicine. Representatives of this mostly refused group among classic homoeopaths, believe that they do not need to introduce the remedies into the body of the patient after case history and repertorization. Alone the spatial proximity of the remedy to the patient suffices to develop an effect. The remedies could be carried at the body or put under the pillow, for example. A glass of water also can show homoeopathic effects if it is put merely on a sheet of paper with the name of the remedy. The sheet of paper shall transfer its information to glass water which is to be used. Typical methods from this spectrum are the Harmopathy, New Homoeopathy after Erich Körbler, Seghal method, Herscue method, process-oriented homoeopathy, quantum logical homoeopathy, creative homoeopathy, impulse homoeopathy, the Similis cards, Silent Healing or the Sankaran method (also called "Bombay method" or "systematic homoeopathy"). The tele-homoeopathy is one variant of the homoeopathy of which her inventor claims that this works as a remote treatment over the Internet (e-mail or Skype) or via telephone.
The homoeosiniatry is a method to unite the elements of the homoeopathy and the traditional Chinese medicine. Both acupuncture and homoeopathic remedies come to the applications.
Digital homoeopathy as an alternative expression for the Holopathy.
Banerji protocol - Method
C4-Homoeopathy
"resonance-healing" after Peter Chappell

The electrohomoeopathy has to do little apart from the named similarity with the homoeopathy and refers to a variant of the Spagyric. Also certain equipment operated electrically for the diagnostics or therapy is taken to connection by its inventors and suppliers with the homoeopathy or refers to it. To be called exemplary have here for Cem Tech, transmaterial catalyst or Wave transfer.

After the living beings to be treated you distinguish between the homoeopathy for well-being purposes with man as well as the animal homoeopathy and plant homoeopathy. The plant homoeopathy is an expression for methods wherewith the help of homoeopathic products the plant growth shall be influenced. (Example: Product Biplantol.)

Hering's law of cure=

A so-called Hering's law of cure goes back on a suggestion of the Hahnemann supporter Constantin Hering from Saxony in the 19th century. Herring believed that a recovery is carried out, if it goes to an extinction of symptoms in the following directions:

from inside to the outside
from above to below
of now too earlier

Being missing the scientific basis

After about 200 years of research of homoeopaths and non-homoeopaths no scientific proof of an effect of the homoeopathy going beyond the placebo effect has been confessed and it is also regarded as a disproven hypothesis today. After today's level of knowledge homoeopathy has to be equated with a placebo therapy, what does not have to be said, though, that it is completely ineffective. One can indeed, particularly with charismatic therapists and corresponding therapeutical ritual, assume that it can achieve an effect on corresponding patients opposite to a non-treatment (that is the idleness). Dangers result from the homoeopathy from the fact that homoeopaths and patients overestimate the placebo effects of the homoeopathy and refrain from reproducibly effective treatments with an effectiveness proof which goes beyond the placebo effect.

What speaks against homoeopathy are the missing effectiveness proofs, the pseudo-scientific dogmatic character of the homoeopathy schools (which are actually orthodox medical practitioners), the completely missing prevention of the illness as well as inner contradictions like the not reproducible cinchona experiment to which Hahnemann alternatively refers. Homoeopaths don't like to say how long a therapy shall be carried out. From the chemical scientific point of view the method of potentization (which is in reality a dilution under certain circumstances) cannot be brought with the reality into harmony.

As an argument for the homoeopathy the lack of side effects is often mentioned. The argument is, that hardly side effects have to be expected at a strong potentization (dilution). This argument contradicts, however, the assumption that potentization would make the effect of the substances grow and is therefore a contradiction in terms. The claim to strengthen the self-healing ability of man is often named as an argument for the homoeopathy, too. The supporters remain the proof of it, however, guiltily.

Contrary to frequently common views around an integral treatment in the context of the homoeopathy it is to consider this alternative medicine as a symptom based therapy form which is based exclusively on described and observable symptoms of the patient. The aetiology of illnesses (cause study) gets largely hidden.

Hahnemann and modern homoeopaths orientate themselves at healing laws of which the idea also is part that homoeopathic therapies treat people from inside to the outside and beginningly with the latest symptom. In turn such ideas do not have any basis in any models of biology or illness.

The medical faculty of the University of Marburg declared the homoeopathy as false doctrine in the medical news of March 3rd, 1993: It's active principle is deception of the patient, strengthened by the self-deception of the therapist.

Pseudo-scientific explanation approaches

The homoeopathy is not plausible from the scientific view: It contradicts the logic, the laws of nature and medical knowledge of the past and presence. High potencies after D 23 or C 12 do not contain any molecule of the raw material. How shall drops which only consist of solvents operate? There is no water memory which could take "information".

It is not meaningful in the scientific medicine to explain the operation of methods which can not provide the slightest effectiveness proof. The question about the active principle of the homoeopathy is completely senseless as long as there are no indications that homoeopathy develops an effect at all. All attempts at explanation of the homoeopathy are not founded therefore scientifically and will be able to do as classified pseudo-scientifically.

This, however, does not stop homoeopaths from thinking up working mechanisms to the homoeopathy and publishing these. The span width reaches the pseudo-scientific re-interpretation of quantum mechanical and atom physical knowledge (see of animistic ideas of spirit animated matter in which the potentization releases the positive spirits (also vibrations) of the substances: Quantum mysticism.

The water memory, which Jacques Benveniste thought to have found, is often quoted as evidence. It is clear at the latest since 1995 that Benvenistes results are not comprehensible. It is nevertheless claimed furthermore that high potencies would contain information, although neither one can find information carriers nor a code is conceivable. So it is not surprising that the last "evidence" which is celebrated as a breakthrough proved also wrong and intolerable with rat intestines at the university Leipzig. An extensive appreciation of this pseudo research at the university Leipzig is found here: [4]. Whatever information the structure of the water contains in the conception of the supporters, it would have to be transferred also to the sugar pills on which the drop of the homoeopathic water is laid on. The memory of the water would have to "survive" in a way the ingestion and absorption through the gastrointestinal system in the body and the transport by the blood up to the tissue. Biologists have neither found a "water memory" nor discovered homoeopathic signals or receptors, still something which could plausibly serve as a receptor for water structures.

Today's homoeopaths often retire on the quantum mechanics to explain the alleged effect of homoeopathic remedies. However, quantum effects are from importance only at a subatomic and perhaps still atomic level. They are not relevant for the macroscopic world or biological systems like viruses, single cells or upward.

The fact that also diluted water is offered as a homoeopathic remedy (1 gram of a diluted water costs about 1 pound, see illustration on the right) makes the concept just as doubtfully as the assertions of some homoeopaths that an effect would start out from remedies carried under the pillow or at the body.

Homoeopathy and medical ethic

Besides the dangers of a refrained or delayed effective therapy in favour of the application of homoeopathic remedies, also other ethical questions arise. The prescription of homoeopathic remedies as a placebo can have only a sense if the therapist does not inform the patient about the actual placebo character of these remedies, and withholds the fact from him that (at least in the high-potentized remedies) no working molecule is contained. It is a disdain of ethical principles not to inform the patient about the real character of a therapy and undermines also the relation to the patient which is based on confidence.

Homoeopathy and malaria prophylaxis and anti tick globules

In Germany it is to be observed again and again that homoeopaths use the remedy malaria 2000 (or another remedy) to a so-called malaria prophylaxis for patients who intend to travel to a country in which the malaria is endemic. Regularly malaria patients have to be treated who indicate to have prepared in such a way in front of malaria and were infected nevertheless. It came to at least one death of a patient after a malaria 2000 prophylaxis. The Bavarian broadcast quotes the tropics institute in Munich on his web pages, there therefore were several deaths with people who had relied on a homoeopathic malaria prophylaxis. The drug commissions of the pharmacists and the German medical association took position with publications and clear warnings against such a homoeopathic malaria prophylaxis: The drug commission of the pharmacists has warned of a homoeopathic malaria prophylaxis in the pharmaceutical newspaper already on March 19th, 1998. It is put straight that malaria represents a serious and partly life-threatening illness and "is not to be confronted with non-specific homoeopathic remedies of which one hopes for an increased immunity of the body against malaria pathogenes. Such malfunctioned “prophylaxis” cases are literature-well-informed". You warn therefore urgently to hand in homoeopathic means to the malaria prophylaxis. It is urgently advised against to hand in homoeopathic remedies to the malaria prophylaxis. The drug commission of the German medical association warn even more considerably and more sharply in the German medical news 95 of June 19th, 1998. The drug commission took reference to a homoeopathic malaria prophylaxis offered by a company. Literal: "Set up doctors who order patients a homoeopathic malaria prophylaxis have to expect profession legal and criminal consequences. The malaria is a serious and perhaps life-threatening illness, because of the acute endangering of the patients who perhaps rely on their homoeopathic remedy, the drug commission of the German medical association sees at the prescription of such homoeopathic remedies to the malaria prophylaxis a violation of the professional duties of the doctor and disadvises urgently, for the safety of the patients, from a prescription of such remedies. On the other hand the illness prophylaxis is controversial within the homoeopathy scene, because no homoeopathic remedies can be found without recognizable symptoms. Also in England such malaria prophylaxes had been confessed and the English state NHS therefore suspended the payments to homoeopathic facilities as of 2008.

Also so-called anti ticks globules are similarly critical to prevent a Lyme disease illness on a natural way, how a pharmacy in Arnsberg secretly means. To this this pharmacy has developed a special mixture with a homoeopathic manufacturer which contains nosodes, which shall represent a homoeopathic vaccination. It particularly is referred to the Tick-borne encephalitis (TBE),which is transferred by ticks, and the Lyme disease. The anti ticks globules shall contain in addition also Ledum palustre (Marsh Labrador tea), what is supposed to change the body odour of one's own according to a protection.

The application of Spenglersan Kolloid M-remedies for the the malaria prophylaxis could not prevent documented a malaria, Swedish doctors published case reports and a warning to this.

The World Health Organization WHO has explicitly warned 2009 of the homoeopathy as a treatment option at malaria, HIV infection, tuberculosis, influenza and diarrhoeas in the childhood.