Editor's Note: This is an area where Wikipedia falls short and debunks homeopathy as pseudoscience when in fact drug therapy is neither scientific or proven effective. Who are the real quacks?
Homeopathy is a system of alternative medicine created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann based on his doctrine of like cures like (similia similibus curentur), a claim that a substance that causes the symptoms of a disease in healthy people would cure similar symptoms in sick people. Large-scale studies have found homeopathic preparations to be no more effective than a placebo, suggesting that positive feelings after taking homeopathic medicines are due to the placebo effect and normal recovery from illness.Homeopathy is a pseudoscience—a belief that is incorrectly presented as scientific—and is ineffective for treating any condition.
Hahnemann believed the underlying causes of disease were phenomena that he termed miasms, and that homeopathic preparations addressed these. The preparations are manufactured using a process of homeopathic dilution, which involves repeatedly diluting a chosen substance in alcohol or distilled water, followed by forceful striking on an elastic body.Dilution typically continues well past the point where no molecules of the original substance remain. Homeopaths select remedies by consulting reference books known as repertories, and by considering the totality of the patient's symptoms, personal traits, physical and psychological state, and life history.
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