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Homeopathy
Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people can cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called '' similia similibus curentur'', or "like cures like". Homeopathic preparations are termed ''remedies'' and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent. Often not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product. Between each dilution homeopaths may hit and/or shake the product, claiming this makes the diluent remember the original substance after its removal. Practitioners claim that such preparations, upon oral intake, can treat or cure disease. All relevant scientific knowledge ab ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miasm
Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people can cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called '' similia similibus curentur'', or "like cures like". Homeopathic preparations are termed ''remedies'' and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent. Often not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product. Between each dilution homeopaths may hit and/or shake the product, claiming this makes the diluent remember the original substance after its removal. Practitioners claim that such preparations, upon oral intake, can treat or cure disease. All relevant scientific knowledge about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miasms And Disease
Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was conceived in 1796 by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people can cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called '' similia similibus curentur'', or "like cures like". Homeopathic preparations are termed ''remedies'' and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, the selected substance is repeatedly diluted until the final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent. Often not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product. Between each dilution homeopaths may hit and/or shake the product, claiming this makes the diluent remember the original substance after its removal. Practitioners claim that such preparations, upon oral intake, can treat or cure disease. All relevant scientific knowledge about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Vithoulkas
George Vithoulkas ( el, Γιώργος Βυθούλκας; born 25 July 1932, in Athens) is a Greek teacher and practitioner of homeopathy. He studied homeopathy in South Africa and received a diploma in homeopathy from the Indian Institute of Homeopathy in 1966. Upon receiving his diploma, he returned to Greece where he practiced and began teaching classical homeopathy to a small group of medical doctors. His alleged therapeutic success drew attention and led to the establishment in 1970 of what eventually became the Center of Homeopathic Medicine in Athens, a school exclusively for M.D.s. In 1972, Vithoulkas started a Greek homeopathic journal, ''Homeopathic Medicine''. In 1976, he organized the first of an annual series of International Homeopathic Seminars. In 1995, he opened the International Academy for Classical Homeopathy (I.A.C.H.) on Alonissos, to provide postgraduate training for homeopaths. It is dedicated exclusively to the teaching of homeopathy. Vithoulkas has a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Homeopathic Dilution
In homeopathy, homeopathic dilution (known by practitioners as "dynamisation" or "potentisation") is a process in which a substance is diluted with alcohol or distilled water and then vigorously shaken in a process called "succussion". Insoluble solids, such as quartz and oyster shell, are diluted by grinding them with lactose (''trituration''). The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann (1755–1843), asserted that the process of succussion activated the "vital energy" of the diluted substance, and that successive dilutions increased the "potency" of the preparation, although other strands of homeopathy (such as Schuessler's) disagreed. The concept is pseudoscience because, at commonly used dilutions, no molecules of the original material are likely to remain. Therefore high homeopathic dilutions must be distinguished from low dilutions where there can be an overlap with herbal medicine. Background The founder of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann found that undiluted doses cause ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Tyler Kent
James Tyler Kent (1849–1916) was an American physician best remembered as a forefather of modern homeopathy. In 1897 Kent published a massive guidebook on human physical and mental disease symptoms and their associated pseudoscientific homeopathic preparations entitled ''Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica'', which has been translated into a number of languages. It has been the blueprint to many modern repertories used throughout the world and even remains in use by some homeopathic practitioners today. Life and career Early years James Tyler Kent was born on March 31, 1849, in Woodhull, New York, the son of Steven Kent and his wife Caroline Tyler."James Tyler Kent," ''Lectures on Homoeopathic Materia Medica.'' Philadelphia: [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Hahnemann
Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann (; 10 April 1755 – 2 July 1843) was a German physician, best known for creating the pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine called homeopathy. Early life Christian Friedrich Samuel Hahnemann was born in Meissen, Saxony, near Dresden. His father Christian Gottfried Hahnemann was a painter and designer of porcelain, for which the town of Meissen is famous. As a young man, Hahnemann became proficient in a number of languages, including English, French, Italian, Greek and Latin. He eventually made a living as a translator and teacher of languages, gaining further proficiency in "Arabic, Syriac, Chaldaic and Hebrew". Hahnemann studied medicine for two years at Leipzig. Citing Leipzig's lack of clinical facilities, he moved to Vienna, where he studied for ten months. After one term of further study, he graduated MD at the University of Erlangen on 10 August 1779, qualifying with honors. His poverty may have forced him to choose Erl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternative Medicine
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), and holistic medicine attempt to combine alternative practices with those of mainstream medicine. Alternative therapies share in common that they reside outside of medical science and instead rely on pseudoscience. Traditional practices become "alternative" when used outside their original settings and without proper scientific explanation and evidence. Frequently used derogatory terms for relevant practices are ''new age'' or ''pseudo-'' medicine, with little distinction from quackery. Some alternative practices are based on theories that contradict the established science of how the human body works; others resort to the supernatural or superstitious to expl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternative Medicine
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or evidence from clinical trials. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), and holistic medicine attempt to combine alternative practices with those of mainstream medicine. Alternative therapies share in common that they reside outside of medical science and instead rely on pseudoscience. Traditional practices become "alternative" when used outside their original settings and without proper scientific explanation and evidence. Frequently used derogatory terms for relevant practices are ''new age'' or ''pseudo-'' medicine, with little distinction from quackery. Some alternative practices are based on theories that contradict the established science of how the human body works; others resort to the supernatural or superstitious to expl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commission On Pseudoscience
The Commission on Pseudoscience () is a Russian scientific organisation under the , created on the initiative of Vitaly Ginzburg in 1998. Until 2018, the organisation was a member of the Commission on Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research, since 2018 it has been independent. The commission's task is to promote scientific knowledge and counter the discrediting of science and pseudoscientific activity. History The prerequisite for the emergence in the structure of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) of a separate body focused on countering the spread of pseudoscientific theories was their widespread distribution in Russia in the 1990s. Unproven theories were popular even in the highest echelons of power: in the book ''Scientists from the Highway'', Academician of the RAS and future chairman of the Commission on Pseudoscience and Falsification of Scientific Research described the case when then Russia's president Boris Yeltsin's security guard Alexander Korzhak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quackery
Quackery, often synonymous with health fraud, is the promotion of fraudulent or ignorant medical practices. A quack is a "fraudulent or ignorant pretender to medical skill" or "a person who pretends, professionally or publicly, to have skill, knowledge, qualification or credentials they do not possess; a charlatan or snake oil salesman". The term ''quack'' is a clipped form of the archaic term ', from nl, kwakzalver a "hawker of salve". In the Middle Ages the term ''quack'' meant "shouting". The quacksalvers sold their wares on the market shouting in a loud voice. Common elements of general quackery include questionable diagnoses using questionable diagnostic tests, as well as untested or refuted treatments, especially for serious diseases such as cancer. Quackery is often described as "health fraud" with the salient characteristic of aggressive promotion. Definition Psychiatrist and author Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch defines quackery "as the promotion of unsubst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vitalism
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark," "energy," or "'' élan vital''," which some equate with the soul. In the 18th and 19th centuries vitalism was discussed among biologists, between those who felt that the known mechanics of physics would eventually explain the difference between life and non-life and vitalists who argued that the processes of life could not be reduced to a mechanistic process. Vitalist biologists such as Johannes Reinke proposed testable hypotheses meant to show inadequacies with mechanistic explanations, but their experiments failed to provide support for vitalism. Biologists now consider vitalism in this sense to have been refuted by empirical eviden ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allopathic Medicine
Allopathic medicine, or allopathy, is an archaic term used to define science-based modern medicine. Citing: ''Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine'' (2008) and ''Mosby's Medical Dictionary'', 8th ed. (2009). There are regional variations in usage of the term. In the United States, the term is used to contrast with osteopathic medicine, especially in the field of medical education. In India, the term is used to distinguish modern medicine from Ayurveda, homeopathy, and other similar alternative/traditional medicine, especially when comparing treatments and drugs. The terms were coined in 1810 by the inventor of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. It was originally used by 19th-century homeopaths as a derogatory term for heroic medicine, the traditional European medicine of the time and a precursor to modern medicine, that did not rely on evidence of effectiveness. Heroic medicine was based on the belief that disease is caused by imbalance among the four " humours" (blood, phlegm, yellow b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
