Homoeopathy

Termed today as pseudoscientific, was once a relevant way of treating diseases. Homoeopathy in our modern world is quite misunderstood. Homoeopathy is an art and requires a great understanding of the body and the symptomatology of a disease. Lost on doctors and many of the scientific community, homoeopathy used in the correct way has helped many people to overcome quite severe diseases from asthma to infections. Similia similibus curentur – “like cures like” the famous quote from Samuel Hahnemann a German physician of the 18^th century, describes exactly the practice of homoeopathy. A substance that elicits a certain disease pattern in a healthy individual is diluted over and over creating the different strengths of homeopathic medicine and when the correct strengths and remedy is selected will cure the ailment. Homoeopathy is somewhat reliant on the memory of water. For many decades of the modern world this was dismissed as humbug until 2018, when it was scientifically proven that water has memory. Examining individual drops of water at an extraordinary high magnification, scientists found that each drop of water had its own individual microscopic pattern, each distinguishable from the next. Through a scientific experiment whereby a group of students were all encouraged to obtain one drop of water from the same body of water at the same time. Through close examination of these individual droplets, it was seen that each produced a different image.

In India homoeopathy is still one of the major forms of treatment for many diseases. Until 2022 in Germany, homoeopathy was still practiced at the same level as any other medical consultancy and homoeopaths are referred to as “doctor”. Homoeopathy is basically micro dosing which has come back in fashion again in the medical profession. Research shows that often only very small amounts are needed to correct imbalances in the body. In 2023 a phase I clinical trial carried out by the Dana Faber Institute tested the safety and efficacy of an implantable microdevice to deliver a smaller amount of drugs to a tumour in patients with renal cell cancer. It appears that it is much more effective than delivering large doses of drugs to patients. So why do doctors have so many problems recognizing homoeopathy as a legitimate way of treating simple health problems? The answer to this lies in the conduction of clinical trials. There was an attempt a few years ago to carry out a clinical trial using homoeopathic medicines which failed. However, the experimental design was flawed and of course it was dismissed as a failure and no mention of how many drugs fail a clinical trial. One of the most famous in recent years is remdesivir [1,2]. This drug demonstrated limited clinical efficacy for treatment of Covid-19 despite good in vitro activity against severe acute respiratory syndrome. It is known to cause severe toxicity [3]. So, what makes that different to homoeopathy? Homoeopathic medicine will not cause toxicity and if the wrong remedy is given, over a period of time the action of the remedy will subside. If Homoeopathy is as harmless and useless as is stated in arguments by the medical profession, why is there so much uproar when it is used successfully?