What is Homeopathy? Why don't more people in the USA know about it?

Homeopathy is a system of medicine that is over two hundred years old.  In 1810 Samuel Hahnemann, a German medical doctor, published his book “Organon of the Rational Art of Healing.”  This laid the foundations for the practice of homeopathy, a practice based on Hahnemann’s own scientific experimentation, testing his highly diluted, and therefore safe, substances on himself and other human volunteers.  Hahnemann's book was revised and rewritten in six editions before his death in 1843.  The sixth edition of Hahnemann’s book was not actually published until 1921 under the title “Organon of Medicine.”  Hahnemann’s research led him to develop a philosophical and practical framework for the practice of medicine that rested on the following three principles:

1)   Like cures like

2)   The minimum dose

3)   Individualization of treatment

Most controversial of these is the second principle of homeopathy, the minimum dose.  Very small doses of medicinal substances are uses.  These are successively diluted and shaken vigorously during preparation.  As stated already, the original title of Hahnemann’s book was “Organon of the Rational Healing Art,” and yet today homeopathy is often dismissed for being irrational.  It seems irrational to believe that infinitesimal doses of medicinal substances could have any effect, let alone a curative effect on an illness.  However, the practice of Hahnemann himself, as well as those of hundreds of thousands of homeopaths around the world, bear witness to its efficacy. 

The rational explanation for the efficacy of homeopathy may come from quantum physics.  Apparently quantum physics does not disprove Newtonian physics, it “simply extends our understanding of extremely small and extremely large systems.  Likewise homeopathy does not disprove conventional pharmacology; instead, it extends our understanding of extremely small doses of medicinal agents” (Dana Ullman, MPH).

If homeopathy does work, why isn’t it more prevalent in the USA today?  Dana Ullman states in his article “Lincoln and his Team of Homeopaths” (Huffington Post 12/23/2012) that after great success during the cholera and typhoid epidemics of the mid-1800’s homeopathy began to be viewed with suspicion, and perhaps envy, by the AMA.   According to Ullman one AMA member got kicked out of his local medical society for consulting with a homeopath, who also happened to be his wife.  Ullman states that in the 1850s and 1860s “the conventional medical community was threatened by the fact that homeopathy was attracting so many US cultural leaders.  The strongest advocates for homeopathy tended to be educated classes and wealthy Americans as well as abolitionists, the literary greats (including virtually all of the leading American transcendentalist authors), and the suffragists (homeopathy admitted women into their medical schools and associations several decades before the conventional doctors did).”

In 2011 the Swiss government commissioned the most comprehensive report ever conducted on homeopathy that concluded it to be both clinical and cost-effective.  Today it is in widespread use in many countries including the UK, where the Royal Family are supporters, and India, where it is regarded by many as being “for the poor,” because it is not as expensive as western medicine. 

Maybe we can learn a thing or two about cost-effectiveness in medicine and simultaneously reduce the terrible side-effects suffered as a result of using many conventional (allopathic) medicines.