Homeopathy - Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine that treats a disease with heavily diluted preparations that are thought to cause effects similar to the disease's symptoms. First expounded by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, homeopathic preparations are serially diluted with shaking ("succussing") after each step under the assumption that this increases the effect of the treatment. This dilution often continues until none of the original substance remains.[1] Since homeopathic remedies generally contain few to zero pharmacologically active ingredients, they are generally thought to have no effect beyond placebo by mainstream medical practitioners.[2] Modern homeopaths have proposed that water has a memory that allows homeopathic preparations to work without any of the original substance; however, the physics of water is well understood, and no known mechanism permits such a memory.

Homeopathy is a vitalist philosophy in that it interprets diseases and sickness as caused by disturbances in a hypothetical vital force or life force and sees these disturbances as manifesting themselves in unique symptoms. Homeopathy maintains that the vital force has the ability to react and adapt to internal and external causes, which homeopaths refer to as the "law of susceptibility". The law of susceptibility states that a negative state of mind can attract hypothetical disease entities called "miasms" to invade the body and produce symptoms of diseases.[23] However, Hahnemann rejected the notion of a disease as a separate thing or invading entity and insisted that it was always part of the "living whole".[24]