Homeopathy Under Examination

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Homeopathy under Examination

I’ve gathered two books that promote homeopathy as an alternative to conventional medicine.   Homeopathy Made Simple, by Dr. R. Donald Papon and Rage-Free Kids: Homeopathic Medicine for Defiant, Aggressive and Violent Children, by Judyth and Reichenberg-Ulman and Robert Ulman. I’m going to analyze the claims made by these authors and attempt to prove them wrong

Before I move on, let me inform the readers of the most basic concept of homeopathy.   In a nutshell, the concept of The Law of Similars states is “like cures like”. For an example, if you have insomnia then a dosage of caffeine is supposed to help you sleep.   If you have a rash the poison ivy may be a candidate for the treatment.   Do not laugh; this is one of the main pillars of homeopathy.   To make things more bizarre, the more you dilute a substance, the stronger it gets.   I will explain this belief in further detail later in this essay.

In Homeopathy Made Simple, on page 176, Dr. R. Donald Papon makes the following claim about Hahnemann, “Bothered by the all-too-often accepted habit of using drugs in excess (sounds familiar doesn’t it?)”.   Well, in that time frame, it doesn’t sound familiar at all!   During Hahnemann’s time, around the late 1700s and early 1800s, little was known about human biology and the nature of diseases.   In fact, medical science during that time was guesswork based on the idea of the body having four “bodily humors”, which are black bile, yellow bile, flem and blood.   Bloodletting, among other things including homeopathy, was one of the many procedures which attempted to balance these “bodily humors”.   Using drugs in excess was, to my knowledge, not the norm during this time.  

In page 177, Dr. Papon quotes, “a surprising report in 1992”, without mentioning the source of this report, “noted that some 15 percent of Americans visit alternative therapists for which they pay more out-of-pocket...