Homoeopaths treat disease using very low dose preparations administered according to the principle that "like should be cured with like." Practitioners select a drug that would, if given to a healthy volunteer, cause the presenting symptoms of the patient. For example, the homoeopathic remedy Allium cepa is derived from the common onion. Contact with raw onions typically causes lacrimation, stinging and irritation around the eyes and nose, and clear nasal discharge. Allium cepa might be prescribed to patients with hay fever, especially if both nose and eyes are affected.
Homeopaths tend to believe in such things as "vital forces" being in harmony (health) or out of harmony (disease). And they tend to advocate holistic medicine, treating "vital forces," "spirits," "minds", etc., as well as the body. Homeopaths like to say that they treat "persons" not "bodies" or "diseases."

One criticism of homeopathy is that it takes the "cookie cutter" approach to treatment: one-size-fits-all. No matter what ails you, treatment with a diluted like agent is the cure. Experience teaches otherwise. For example, the treatment for scurvy is not more scurvy but vitamin C; the treatment for diabetes is not sugar, but insulin. There seem to be countless examples one could come up which would contraindicate homeopathy as a reasonable approach to the treatment of disease. Thus, simply because it is sometimes reasonable to treat like with like (e.g., polio vaccines), it does not follow that it is always reasonable to treat like with like. It is misleading, however, to compare the use of vaccines in medicine to homeopathic remedies; for, medical vaccines would be ineffective if they were as diluted as homeopathic remedies.

Other common homoeopathic medicines include those made from plants such as belladonna, arnica, and chamomile; minerals such as mercury and sulphur; animal products such as sepia (squid ink) and lachesis (snake venom); and, more rarely, biochemical substances such as histamine or human growth factor. The remedies are prepared by a process of serial dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking). The more times this process of dilution and succussion is performed, the greater the "potency" of the remedy.

Prescribing strategies in homoeopathy vary considerably. In what is often termed "classical" homoeopathy, practitioners attempt to identify the single medicine that corresponds to a patient's general "constitution"a complex picture incorporating current illness, medical history, personality, and behaviour. Two patients with identical conventional diagnoses may receive very different homoeopathic medicines.

Other practitioners prescribe combinations of medicines ("complex homoeopathy") or prescribe on the basis of conventional diagnosis alone. There is currently insufficient evidence concerning the relative benefits of the different approaches to treatment.

How can homoeopathy work ?

It is well known that many homoeopathic medicines are ultramolecularthat is, they are diluted to such a degree that not even a single molecule of the original solute is likely to be present. As drug actions are conventionally understood in biochemical terms, homoeopathy presents an enormous intellectual challenge, if not a complete impasse. Many scientists have suggested that the clinical effects of homoeopathic medicines are solely due to the placebo effect. However, there have been rigorous, replicated, double blind, randomised trials showing significant differences between homoeopathic and placebo tablets.

The response to this has been mixed. Some people remain unconvinced by the evidence, claiming that there must be another explanation, such as methodological bias, for the results. Others point out that the evidence is very strong and argue that homoeopathic medicines must work by some, as yet undefined, biophysical mechanism. One possible explanation, currently being investigated, is that during serial dilution the complex interactions between the solvent (water) molecules are permanently altered to retain a "memory" of the original solute material.

What happens during a treatment ?

Homoeopaths' consultations for chronic conditions include an extremely detailed case history. Patients are asked to describe their medical history and current symptoms. Particular attention is paid to the "modalities" of presenting symptoms that is, whether they change according to the weather, time of day, season, and so on. Information is also gathered about mood and behaviour, likes and dislikes, responses to stress, personality, and reactions to food. The overall aim of the history taking is to build up a "symptom picture" of the patient. This is matched with a "drug picture" described in the homoeopathic Materia medica. On this basis, one or more homoeopathic medicines are prescribed, usually in pill form. Sometimes treatment consists of only one or two doses. In other cases a regular daily dose is used.

Two to six weeks after the start of treatment, progress is reviewed and alterations made to remedy or dilution. A patient's initial symptom picture commonly matches more than one homoeopathic remedy, and follow up allows the practitioner to make an empirical judgment on whether a particular remedy was the correct one to prescribe. If the patient is doing well the practitioner may stop treatment and monitor progress. If symptoms recur the treatment may be repeated at the same or a higher potency. If the symptom picture has changed at follow up a different homoeopathic prescription may be given even though the conventional diagnosis remains unchanged.

Homoeopathic consultations in private practice may last over an hour, although many NHS general practitioners practise basic homoeopathy in 10-15 minute appointments. Many homoeopaths also recommend changes to diet and lifestyle, and some advise against vaccination (see section on safety below).

Therapeutic scope

Most of a typical homoeopath's caseload consists of chronic or recurrent conditions such as eczema, rheumatoid arthritis, fatigue disorders, asthma, migraine, dysmenorrhoea, irritable bowel syndrome, recurrent upper respiratory or urinary tract infections, and mood disorders. Homoeopaths also treat a substantial number of patients with ill defined illness that has not been given a conventional diagnosis. Children are much more commonly treated by homoeopaths than by other types of complementary practitioner.

Some homoeopaths say that few conditions are truly outside their remit, and the homoeopathic case literature includes treatment of complaints as diverse as tuberous sclerosis, infertility, myasthenia gravis, fear of flying, and cystic fibrosis. That said, opinions about what can be effectively treated by homoeopathy differ widely, even among homoeopaths, with medically trained practitioners generally being more conservative than non-medical ones. It is also used, often by self prescription, to treat various acute conditions such as the common cold, bruising, hay fever, and joint sprains.

Research evidence
Given the difficulties in understanding how homoeopathy may work, researchers have concentrated on establishing whether it is a placebo treatment. Current evidence suggests that this is probably not the case. A recent meta-analysis, published in the Lancet, examined over 100 randomised, placebo controlled trials and found an odds ratio of 2.45 (95% confidence interval 2.05 to 2.93) in favour of homoeopathy. The authors concluded that, even allowing for publication bias, "the results of our meta-analysis are not compatible with the hypothesis that the clinical effects of homoeopathy are completely due to placebo."

The notorious Benveniste affair, which involved accusations of fraud and scientific misconduct after the publication of an in vitro experiment in Nature, continues to dampen enthusiasm for basic research in homoeopathy. None the less, laboratory studies have reported biological effects of homoeopathic medicines on animals, plants, and cellssome at ultramolecular dilutions.

Evidence is less clear on the effectiveness of homoeopathy as it is generally practised for the conditions that homoeopaths usually treat. Many trials have investigated treatment of an acute condition with a single remedy. This makes research easier but does not reflect the real world of homoeopathic clinical practice. For example, in the best known UK trial 144 patients with hay fever were randomised to receive either homoeopathically prepared grass pollen or placebo. Though there was a significant result in favour of homoeopathy, implications for clinical practice are unclear as most homoeopaths do not treat hay fever with homoeopathic grass pollen alone.

There is currently insufficient evidence that homoeopathy is clearly efficacious for any single clinical condition. For many of the conditions treated in homoeopathic practicesuch as depression, fatigue, and eczemarandomised trials have not been undertaken. In addition, few of the existing studies of homoeopathy have been independently replicated.

Safety of homoeopathy

Serious unexpected adverse effects of homoeopathic medicines are rare. "Aggravation reactions," when symptoms become acutely and transiently worse after starting homoeopathic treatment, have been described and are said by homoeopaths to be a good prognostic factor. They may cause concern, especially if patients and doctors are not adequately forewarned.

A potentially more serious issue is the belief of some practitioners that conventional drugs reduce the efficacy of homoeopathy. Serious adverse events have resulted from patients failing to comply with essential conventional treatments while using homoeopathy. Some, mainly non-medical, homoeopaths are also strongly against vaccination, although the official policy of the Society of Homoeopaths is to give patients information and choice and not to pressurise against immunisation. Homoeopaths may offer alternatives to vaccination. These have not been subjected to clinical trials and cannot therefore be recommended as an effective substitute.

HOMEOPATHY AND ALLOPATHY:
It was Hippocrates who gave us the concepts of what Samuel Hahnemann would name "allopathy" and "homeopathy."

Hippocrates said that there were two concepts of healing. To ways to approach the symptoms of disease. And that he could best illustrate them by thinking of them as two streams that flowed side by side in opposite directions. Those two streams are homeopathy and allopathy.

The term "allopathy" is taken from two greek words "allos," which means "other" and "pathos," which means suffering. The idea here is that the symptoms that the patient associates with pain are bad things, they are things that must be struggled with and worked against. The doctor who practices allopathy will give a patient medicines that will work against the symptoms that are in place, or will simply mask the symptoms. Therefore, the patient who has a cold which has left him with a runny nose and tearing eyes will receive a medicine that has the power to dry up both eyes and noses. And the patient who has a headache will be given a medicine that will interrupt their ability to feel the headache pain. In neither case will the medicine acutally work with the actual cause of the symptoms. The cold medicine will have no effect on the cold itself, nor will the pain medicine actually put an end to the headache. Bottom line: the allopath depends upon the body to ultimately heal itself and creates an environment in which that healing can take place with as much comfort as possible.

Homeopathy, on the other hand, is something very different. The term "homeopathy" is also taken from two Greek words, "homios," or "similar" and "pathos," or "suffering."

For the homeopath, illness is not an invader of any sort, but is, instead, the being’s response to some trauma or crisis that has sent the patient into a tailspin. The symptoms, therefore, tell you more about the patient’s reaction to circumstances than they do about the circumstances themselves. First, they tell you that the patient was susceptible to the trauma that they suffered. They were in a state in which they were resonating with the illness enough for it to take hold. This may have been caused by exhaustion, depression, or any of many other causes, but the homeopath recogizes that there was a reason that the patient became ill in the first place.

Because the symptoms associated with the illness are not invaders, but a part of the patient himself, they must be respected as such and worked with and not against.

The homeopath will, in fact, give the patient a remedy that would, in a healthy person, create the very symptoms that are in place naturally within the patient’s being. He does this with the knowledge that as the Patient’s Vital Force rises up to move against the effects of the remedy, it will move against the illness as well and restore the patient to health.

It is important that Hippocrates states that these two streams of medicine flow side by side and that they flow in opposite directions. They are, in many ways, in close proximity with one another. They almost touch, and yet, there is never truly a meeting point. Because they flow in opposite directions, and have opposite impacts upon the being--one suppressive and the other expressive--they never can be united as one.

For the purposes of this site, the concepts of homeopathy and allopathy transcend the practices of these specific schools of treatment. When we use the term "homeopathy," we refer to any school of treatment that is, in its action and philosophy, homeopathic. Therefore, acupuncture, chiropractic and naturopathy are, for our purposes, homeopathic.

The same might be said about allopathy. For our purposes, it is a form of treatment that involves the use of substances to control symptoms in a suppressive manner. Therefore, for our purposes, herbal medicines would be considered as allopathic a modern chemical medicines