User:Friarslantern/HomeoIntroDraft
“ | Homeopathy (also homœopathy or homoeopathy; from the Greek, ὅμοιος, hómoios, "similar" + πάθος, páthos, "suffering" or "disease") is a form of alternative medicine with metaphysical underpinnings, first elaborated in the eighteenth century and still maintaining a small following today. Treating "like with like", substances — which in large quantities would cause symptoms similar to the disease they are meant to treat — are administered in heavily diluted formulations in hopes of stimulating the body to respond and remove the symptom. The theory and practice of homeopathy has been widely and vigorously criticized by scientists as baseless and ineffective.
Homeopathy was first conceived in the late 18th century by German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Hahnemann noticed a similarity between the symptoms created by giving undiluted cinchona bark extract to healthy individuals and the symptoms of malaria, which the very same cinchona bark had been conventionally used to heal.[1] Hahnemann concluded that, to be effective, drugs should produce the same sorts of symptoms in healthy individuals as are being experienced by the patient with the illness that the drug is supposed to treat[2]. The homeopathic practitioner repeatedly dilutes the chosen substance, and, at each stage of the dilution, shakes it. Finished homeopathic remedies are so dilute they contain few or even no molecules of the original substance,[3] a fact which is central to criticism of the tradition by physical and biological scientists. Homeopaths contend that the shaking causes an imprint (or "memory") of the diluted substance upon the vehicle (the diluting water or alcohol itself); ingesting the resulting remedy harmonizes and re-balances a theorized vital force in the body, thus restoring health.
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- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
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was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Similia similibus curentur (Like cures like)". Creighton University Department of Pharmacology. Retrieved 2007-08-20.
- ^ a b Cite error: The named reference
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was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Altunç U, Pittler MH, Ernst E (2007). "Homeopathy for childhood and adolescence ailments: systematic review of randomized clinical trials". Mayo Clin Proc. 82 (1): 69–75. PMID 17285788.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann's "Organon Of Medicine" translated by Dudgeon Fifth Edition § 269
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