Homeopathy

  • Overview

Introduction 

Video: the placebo effect

Many critics of homeopathy have argued that any improvements in symptoms that occur after homeopathic treatment are actually due to the placebo effect. Ben Goldacre, doctor and author of Bad Science, explains what the placebo effect is

Homeopathy is a type of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). CAMs are treatments that are not based on conventional scientific theories. Other CAMS include:

  • acupuncture - where needles are placed in certain parts of the body,
  • chiropractic - where physical manipulation of the spine and joints is used to try to relieve symptoms, and
  • faith healing.

The principles of homeopathy

Homeopathy was devised by a German doctor called Samuel Hahnemann during the 1790s.
Hahnemann had a series of ideas that evolved into the principles of homeopathy.

Like cures like

The first idea was that a substance that would cause symptoms in a healthy person can be used to cure the same symptoms in someone who is ill. For example, if somebody is suffering from insomnia, they can be treated with a homeopathic remedy that contains extracts of coffee.

Homeopaths refer to this as the principle of ‘like cures like’.

Potentisation

Hahnemann’s second idea is that the more you dilute a substance, the more you increase its power to treat symptoms that it would otherwise cause.

Homeopaths refer to this as the principle of ‘potentisation’.

Succession and proving

Hahnemann stated that to be effective, the process of dilution had to be performed in a very specific manner.

For example, a substance, such as a herb like belladonna, should be diluted into a glass container containing water or alcohol. The vessel is then shaken firmly 10 times.

Homeopaths believe that by shaking the vessel you can ‘imprint the healing energy of the medicinal substance throughout the body of water’.

The process of dilution and shaking is then repeated multiple times, with some homeopathic remedies being diluted by one drop in a hundred, thirty times over (a 30C dilution). This process is known as succession.

As the succession process is ongoing, a group of volunteers will take six doses of the remedy at different dilutions over the course of two days. They will record any mental or physical symptoms in a diary. Each person’s diary is then collated into a list of symptoms called a repertory. This process is known as ‘proving’.

Therefore, a homeopath will try to match your symptom to one that is caused by a remedy during the proving process.

Last reviewed: 23/06/2009

Next review due: 23/06/2011

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4 Comments

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Chris Thompson said on 25 November 2009

It is an absolute scandal that NHS money is being spent supporting homeopathic medicines at the same time as certain cancer drugs, proven to extend the live of cancer sufferers, are being denied to patients on the grounds of cost. When will this madness end?

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Robert Mathie said on 03 July 2009

Readers are advised to consult the websites of the British Homeopathic Association and the Faculty of Homeopathy (links are top right of this page) for a precise account of homeopathy and its context within the NHS. From these sites it will be clear, for example, that 44% of randomised controlled trials in homeopathy have reported positive effects, and only 7% have been negative. These data are similar to the findings of a comprehensive meta-analysis of placebo-controlled trials of homeopathy (Linde et al., Lancet 1997; vol 350: pp834–43), in which 48% of trials were positive.

It should also be noted that different homeopathic remedies and different dilutions of the same remedy have been distinguished from each other using Raman and infrared spectroscopy, even though all should theoretically contain nothing but water (Rao et al., Homeopathy 2007; vol 96: pp175–182). Such findings may relate to complex processes such as the formation, during succussion, of colloidal nanobubbles that could contain the remedy source material.

The cost of homeopathy to the National Health Service is minuscule. Recent figures show that the NHS spent £12 million on homeopathy over a three-year period from 2005. £4 million a year for homeopathy (equating to 6 pence per annum per head of the British population) compares more than favourably to the amount the NHS spends each year on management consultants for example (approx. £320 million) or on treating in-patients with adverse reactions to conventional drugs (approx. £460 million).

Robert Mathie PhD
Research Development Adviser
British Homeopathic Association

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Charles Draper said on 02 May 2009

2/2

Advocates of homeopathy sometimes respond to this argument by asserting that the curative effect of homeopathic remedies arises from a "memory" of the vanished active ingredient that is somehow retained by the water in which it was dissolved (and then by the starch when the water is evaporated!). But the diffculty, once again, is not simply the lack of any reliable experimental evidence for such a "memory of water". Rather, the problem is that the existence of such a phenomenon would contradict well-tested science, in this case the statistical mechanics of fl
uids. The molecules of any liquid are constantly being bumped by other molecules - what physicists call thermal
fluctuations - so that they lose any 'memory" of their past configuration within a fraction of a second.

In short, all the millions of experiments confirming modern physics and chemistry also constitute powerful evidence against homeopathy. Despite this, the NHS continues to fund homeopathic 'treatment' at the taxpayers' expense. No one, not even the Health Minister, seems to know how much the NHS spends annually on unproven (or disproven) "complementary and alternative" therapies, because the NHS does not bother to keep track.

Estimates of the annual cost range from £50 to £450 million.

For footnotes and source, see: http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/
sokal/sense_about_science_PUBL.pdf

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Charles Draper said on 02 May 2009

(1/2)

I too am worried by the NHS's decision to fund and promulgate information regarding homeopathy and similar alternative health treatments. Rigorous meta-analyses have shown homeopathy to be no more effective than placebo treatments, and have in fact revealed an inverse correlation between the methodological quality of studies and the observed effectiveness of homeopathy. In other words - sloppier studies were more likely to show that homeopathy worked.

The above article is also misleading in that it suggests homeopathy is some sort of herbal remedy. While many plants have been shown to posesses medicinal properties, homeopathy relies on the notion the these properties can be increased by dilution with water, often to a level at which no molecule of the material is likely to remain.



There is thus no plausible mechanism by which homeopathy could work, unless one rejects everything that we have learned over the last 200 years about physics and chemistry: namely, that matter is made of atoms, and that the properties of matter - including its chemical and biological effects, depend on its atomic structure. There is simply no way that an absent ingredient" could have a therapeutic effect. High-quality clinical trials find no difference between homeopathy and placebo because homeopathic remedies *are* placebos. (So homeopathic remedies are not just useless but also harmless, unlike conventional or herbal medicines. There is no danger of an overdose!).

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