General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Maybe I'm Misunderstanding Woo... But... Wasn't There A Time When... [View all]Sancho
(9,205 posts)By that "logic", you are no more scientific than woo! I'm not a fan of quackery, but there have been LOTS of cases where "science" turned out to be woo and vice-versa. Only it didn't seem that way at the time.
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http://www.homeopathy-soh.org/about-homeopathy/what-is-homeopathy/
The principle of treating like with like dates back to Hippocrates (460-377BC) but in its current form, homeopathy has been widely used worldwide for more than 200 years.
It was discovered by a German doctor, Samuel Hahnemann, who, shocked with the harsh medical practises of the day (which included blood-letting, purging and the use of poisons such as arsenic), looked for a way to reduce the damaging side-effects associated with medical treatment.
He began experimenting on himself and a group of healthy volunteers, giving smaller and smaller medicinal doses, and found that as well as reducing toxicity, the medicines actually appeared to be more effective the lower the dose. He also observed that symptoms caused by toxic medicines such as mercury, were similar to those of the diseases they were being used to treat e.g. syphilis, which lead to the principle he described as like cures like.
Hahnemann went on to document his work, and his texts formed the foundations of homeopathic medicine as it is practised today. A BBC Radio 4 documentary aired in December 2010 described Hahnemann as a medical pioneer who worked tirelessly to improve medical practice, insisting that medicines were tested before use.
References
1) Endler PC, Heckmann C, Lauppert E, et al. The metamorphosis of amphibians and information of thyroxine. In: Schulte J, Endler PC (eds). Fundamental Research in Ultra High Dilution and Homoeopathy. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998
2) Montagnier L et al. Electromagnetic signals are produced by aqueous nanostructures derived from bacterial DNA sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci, 2009; 1: 81-90