What Is Homeopathy and how does it work?

What Is Homeopathy and how does it work?
(Compiled by a local correspondent from the World Wide Web)

Homeopathy is a system of medical treatment based on the use of minute quantities of remedies that in massive doses produce effects similar to those of the disease being treated. The term is derived from two Greek words: homeo (similar) and pathos (suffering). So, homeopathy means, "that which is similar ends suffering". The 19th century German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, is considered the father of homeopathy. It is based on an original and unusual set of ideas:

Like cures like
You cure a problem with a little bit of the same thing that made you sick. Specifically, homeopaths take extremely diluted doses of substances that in large doses would produce your symptoms. Cure occurs when the sick person is given that substance which can cause the symptoms of their sickness in a healthy person.

Nothing may be something
Advocates of homeopathy think that concoctions with as little as one molecule per million can stimulate the "body's healing mechanism." The doses of the remedy are so diluted that from an objective standpoint you are really taking sugar pills with plain water or alcohol. A high-potency dilution can contain as little as one millionth of a drop of the active ingredient. At first glance this would seem hard to believe. How can nothing cure something? But homeopaths claim, and so do many of their patients, that homeopathy works: “hundreds of double blind studies confirm its efficacy with people and animals”. Critics maintain that such minute doses are unlikely to have any significant effect on the body. However, these remedies have been effectively used on animals and small infants, individual who can't understand either the claims of the remedy or the reasons why it is administered. Since homeopathic medicines are prepared by being infinitesimally diluted, this renders them free from side effects. Therefore they are especially gentle, and easy to administer to sensitive patients, infants, and children.

A standard homeopathic remedy may be made by taking a single drop of a plant substance, mixing it with 100 drops of water, and shaking (this mixture is called a 100-to-1 dilution -- or C for short). After that, a drop of this diluted solution is mixed with another 100 drops of water, and shaken again. This process may be repeated 30 or so times (with the last dilution in alcohol). The result is called a 30C dilution because it involved 30 separate 100-to-1 dilutions.

Water with a memory
The dilutions have to be shaken, not stirred, so the original substance can leave an imprint of itself on the water molecules -- that is, so the water can "remember" whatever was in it before it got so diluted and shaken. In technical terms, the water is said to be "potentized" by the original drug - meaning that it was made more potent, or stronger, than plain water. Oddly enough, homeopaths insist that the more diluted something is, the stronger it is. Why does this happen, they do not know. But as to how homeopathy actually heals by using what amounts to distilled water continues to puzzle researchers. Recently, however, physics research has discovered that water molecules have memory and that the memory is physically different depending on what was dissolved in the water. This seems to point the way to a “scientific” explanation of how homeopathy works.

Does Homeopathy Work?
Homeopathy cures using physics not to cure symptoms, but to act as a catalyst to stimulate the body’s defense system at its deepest levels. While homeopathy does work effectively on acute diseases, its primary goal is to restore the body’s ability to heal itself at all levels. Each individual is treated uniquely – there is not one cure for one type of disease.

The main benefits of homeopathy seem to be that it has several patients who claim to have benefited from it, that its remedies are not likely to cause harm in themselves, and these remedies are generally inexpensive. The main drawbacks seem to be that its remedies are most likely inert and they require acceptance of metaphysical aspects and explanations incapable of scientific analysis. Homeopathy "works", just as biorhythms, chiropractic or traditional medicine, for that matter, "work": i.e., it has its satisfied customers. Homeopathy does not work, however, in the sense of explaining pathologies or their cures in a way which not only conforms with known facts but which promises to lead us to a greater understanding of the nature of health and disease.