Wikipedia defines Homeopathy as a form of alternative medicine that treats patients with heavily diluted preparations that are thought to cause effects similar to the symptoms presented, first expounded by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796.
Homeopathy is the second most widely used system of medicine in the world. Its growth in popularity in the United States has been around 25 to 50 percent a year throughout the last decade. Most people first come to homeopathy when they feel they’ve been failed by conventional medicine. It may be for a long-held, chronic condition, or a short lived acute ailment. It may be that conventional medicine has been unable to help at all, or that the side effects are simply not worth the risk.
Homeopathic remedies (also called homeopathic) are a system of medicine based on three principles:
- Like cures like
For example, if the symptoms of your cold are similar to poisoning by mercury, then mercury would be your homeopathic remedy. - Minimal Dose
The remedy is taken in an extremely dilute form; normally one part of the remedy to around 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water. - The Single Remedy
No matter how many symptoms are experienced, only one remedy is taken, and that remedy will be aimed at all those symptoms.
Similar principals form the basis of conventional allergy treatment, where the allergic substance is given in a small dose, and in vaccines where an impotent form of the virus is given to bolster the immune system against that particular virus.
