Homeopathy + Preventive Medicine
Homeopathy: a preventive approach to medicine?
Marcus Zulian Teixeira
Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
ABSTRACT
By applying the principle of therapeutic similarity, homeopathy seeks to stimulate the organism to react against its own disturbs. For homeopathic medicines to awaken effective homeostasis responses they must be individualized, this means that they must be chosen according to their similarity to the set of characteristic symptoms in patients. In this way, by aiming at decreasing individual susceptibility predisposing to disease, homeopathic medicines have healing and preventive effects in many human illnesses. On the other hand, homeopathic medicines may have specific indications in the treatment and prevention of epidemic diseases provided they are also chosen according to the particular set of symptoms peculiar to a given epidemic, viz. the so-called “epidemic genius”, as historical examples show. This update paper discusses the epistemological foundations of Hahnemann‟s homeopathy as a preventive medical approach, the scientific evidences supporting its clinical application and the minimum requirements to employ it both therapeutically and preventively in epidemics.
Conclusion
Besides its acknowledged application in chronic diseases, individualized homeopathy can also act therapeutically or as coadjuvant in acute cases [63,64] including epidemic diseases. To attain these goals, homeopathy has a semiotic and therapeutic methodology that cannot be dismissed.
Unfortunately, during the last years a series of proposals were made in Brazil for the prophylaxis and/or treatment of dengue and influenza epidemics that do not comply with Hahnemann‟s homeopathic epistemology, but indicate the use of homeopathic complexes (associations of homeopathic and/or isopathic medicines with disregard of previous pathogenetic experimentation as well as individualization according to the characteristic symptomatic totality of each stage of an ongoing epidemic) on the whole population of a given area without using structured research protocols able to assess the efficacy and safety of such practices [62,65,66]
Source :
Link to full Article
Marcus Zulian Teixeira
Faculty of Medicine, Universidade de São Paulo (FMUSP), São Paulo, Brazil
ABSTRACT
By applying the principle of therapeutic similarity, homeopathy seeks to stimulate the organism to react against its own disturbs. For homeopathic medicines to awaken effective homeostasis responses they must be individualized, this means that they must be chosen according to their similarity to the set of characteristic symptoms in patients. In this way, by aiming at decreasing individual susceptibility predisposing to disease, homeopathic medicines have healing and preventive effects in many human illnesses. On the other hand, homeopathic medicines may have specific indications in the treatment and prevention of epidemic diseases provided they are also chosen according to the particular set of symptoms peculiar to a given epidemic, viz. the so-called “epidemic genius”, as historical examples show. This update paper discusses the epistemological foundations of Hahnemann‟s homeopathy as a preventive medical approach, the scientific evidences supporting its clinical application and the minimum requirements to employ it both therapeutically and preventively in epidemics.
Conclusion
Besides its acknowledged application in chronic diseases, individualized homeopathy can also act therapeutically or as coadjuvant in acute cases [63,64] including epidemic diseases. To attain these goals, homeopathy has a semiotic and therapeutic methodology that cannot be dismissed.
Unfortunately, during the last years a series of proposals were made in Brazil for the prophylaxis and/or treatment of dengue and influenza epidemics that do not comply with Hahnemann‟s homeopathic epistemology, but indicate the use of homeopathic complexes (associations of homeopathic and/or isopathic medicines with disregard of previous pathogenetic experimentation as well as individualization according to the characteristic symptomatic totality of each stage of an ongoing epidemic) on the whole population of a given area without using structured research protocols able to assess the efficacy and safety of such practices [62,65,66]
Source :
Link to full Article