Homeopathy is from which country

There's not enough water in the solar system to accommodate this dilution. Hahnemann didn't realize this because he developed his theory before the concept in chemistry of the mole and Avogadro constant, which defines the number of particles in any given amount of a substance.

So, Hahnemann and his followers could do the mechanical actions of dilution, but unbeknownst to them, they were diluting the medicine right out of the solution. Homeopathic practitioners today understand the concept of Avogadro constant. They attribute homeopathy's healing powers to "water memory" — the concept that water has the ability to remember of shape of the medicine it once contained.

There are, however, at least three problems with this stance. First, this concept of water memory is beyond the realm of known physics. Water is not known to maintain an ordered alignment of molecules for much longer than a picosecond.

Second, if water can remember the shape of what's in it, then all water has the potential to be homeopathic. Tap water, with its traces of natural substances sloshing about in pipes known to cause cancer and other diseases, would be therapeutic against these diseases. Third, explanations of how it could work aside, there are no high-quality scientific studies to show that homeopathy is any more effective than a placebo.

But preparations from different suppliers and practitioners may vary. Talk with your doctor about any complementary health practice that you would like to try or are already using. Your doctor can help you manage your health better if he or she knows about all of your health practices.

Author: Healthwise Staff. This information does not replace the advice of a doctor. Healthwise, Incorporated, disclaims any warranty or liability for your use of this information. Your use of this information means that you agree to the Terms of Use.

Learn how we develop our content. To learn more about Healthwise, visit Healthwise. Healthwise, Healthwise for every health decision, and the Healthwise logo are trademarks of Healthwise, Incorporated. Topic Overview What is homeopathy? What is homeopathy used for? Homeopathy, v. The examples described above show that homeopathy found fertile soil upon its arrival in Brazil.

Yet, it did not stop there: the homeopaths took one step further and publicly criticized the ineffectiveness of conventional medicine. In this endeavor, they cited quantitative evidence for the effectiveness of homeopathy in epidemics. Moreover, within the context of the epidemic, some conventional doctors came to admit homeopaths in the cholera clinics they ran p. Homeopaths were members of the official medical institutions, including the National Board of Hygiene p.

And the rate of conversion from conventional to homeopathic medicine dramatically increased during the epidemics of yellow fever and cholera p. It could be inferred from this that at the time of its arrival in Brazil, the conflict was not so strong among doctors, conventional or homeopathic, as between university-trained doctors, both conventional and homeopathic, and lay homeopathic practitioners.

On the side of the conventional medical establishment, the most irritating element was the existence of a homeopathic institute, founded by Mure and Martins, which taught homeopathy to individuals without any previous formal education whatsoever. In turn, the homeopathic doctors openly combatted the training and practice of lay homeopaths, as mentioned above, through the creation of the Medical Homeopathic Association exclusively for university-trained physicians and pharmacists.

Our comparison thus shows that in response to the shortage of physicians in both Sweden and Brazil, lay practitioners were allowed to provide health care. In Sweden, the clergy had health care obligations by governmental mandate, and thus, different from physicians, were more interested in the practical side of medicine. In time they were attracted to homeopathy for what they saw as its practical advantages.

However, although the State and the medical establishment tolerated the homeopathic practice of priests and noblemen, proposals for its formal institutionalization were systematically rejected, even though they had the support of influential members of society. In Brazil, academically trained doctors were struggling to have their monopoly of healing recognized, and did not yet have enough political power to ban other modalities of healing. In this regard, the government seems to have turned a blind eye, possibly because of a concern with the burden of disease, epidemics in particular, which it had no means to tackle.

This lack of health care facilities, the rapid establishment of homeopathic services, a succession of severe epidemics, and the proactive reaction of homeopaths contributed to pave the way for the spread of homeopathy across Brazil. Within this context, the academically trained homeopaths chose to identify with the medical establishment and forsook their connections with lay practitioners and institutions.

If a discipline or field of study might be considered to be institutionalized through the identifiable fulfillment of four prerequisites — the teaching, research, spread, and application of knowledge — and the existence of a community of practitioners that self-identifies as such Caron, CARON, Joseph A. History of Science, v. As was shown, Wahlenberg merely taught some homeopathy in his medical lectures, seemingly exerting definitive and significant influence on Liedbeck only.

The latter, in turn, was practically the only homeopathic practitioner in Sweden in the nineteenth century, and he did not give rise to any school i. In Brazil, homeopathy arrived through various, often mutually conflicting paths, and its success cannot be attributed to the isolated work of any one actor alone, much less without thorough consideration of the socio-historical and scientific context.

Homeopathy did not have to contend with a long-established, soundly institutionalized tradition of conventional medicine. Indeed, conventional doctors were themselves fighting to legitimize their practice and acquire a monopoly over healing. In addition, under the local conditions, the dramatic epidemics in particular, the government was more interested in effective means to combat disease than in supporting any particular approach to medicine at the expense of others — including non-medical healing professions.

Naturally, these conclusions only apply to the first half of the nineteenth century. Canoas: Unilasalle. The comparative analysis performed here shows that in both countries in question the number of university-trained doctors was small at the time of arrival of homeopathy, a condition theoretically favorable to its rooting and institutionalization.

However, in Sweden homeopathy met opposition, as a function of its long tradition in the teaching of medicine, strong government control, and the pre-existence of a national brand of lay healers. Differently, in Brazil conventional medicine was fighting for a monopoly of healing, while the government was not much concerned with the qualifications of the various modes of healers. As such, as a function of epistemological factors and throughout the period of debates about homeopathy, from the s to s, Swedish doctors gave theoretical consistency precedence over clinical effectiveness.

Medical statistics were mistrusted and there was an overwhelming belief in the healing powers of nature, in agreement with the tradition of Romantic medicine and Naturphilosophie. In Brazil, at the time of the arrival of homeopathy, there was no tradition of local learned medicine, and homeopaths aggressively came to the fore brandishing statistical proof of the success of homeopathy in epidemics — curiously, the very same statistics that Swedish doctors, mainly concerned with medical theory, dismissed.

In agreement with such trends, no clinical teaching was provided to medical students in Sweden until By that time, the homeopathic care and teaching clinic in Leipzig had already opened and closed, and a mere four years later the first Brazilian homeopathic outpatient clinic opened its doors. Infectious and contagious diseases, epidemic or endemic, always posed a heavy burden in Brazil, and it is likely that the quantitative evidence provided for the effectiveness of homeopathy was a decisive factor in the early history of this medical approach in the country.

In Sweden, lay homeopathic practitioners belonged to two of the four estates represented in parliament, i. In the case of Brazil, the current state of the art points to an unexpected picture: more than a conflict between conventional and homeopathic doctors, homeopathy triggered a division between academically trained and non-academic practitioners, with the homeopathic doctors siding with their conventional colleagues in the quest for a monopoly over healing.

In the former, conventional medicine was strongly institutionalized. As a result, the strategy of legitimation chosen by Frederick Quin , the founder of the London Homoeopathic Hospital , was to emulate the institutional structure of conventional medicine and establish homeopathy as a practice of the exclusive domain of academically trained doctors. The fact that Quin was a highly reputed physician and had wide transit among the English elites hindered the medical establishment from barring him from practice — yet he was blackballed for admission to the Royal College of Physicians.

In Spain, at the time of the arrival and early institutionalization of homeopathy, the medical profession was in a state of thorough disarray, and thus it was not rejected outright by doctors.

This he did in a highly rigorous manner that put homeopathy one step ahead of the institutions of conventional medicine. We might thus expect that future studies conducted with the comparative method will improve our understanding of the transnational spread of homeopathy at different times and under different circumstances.

Abrir menu Brasil. Abrir menu. Stockholm — Sweden info exempla. Abstract The comparative approach has been advocated to overcome some flaws inherent to case studies. Resumo A abordagem comparativa foi adotada com o intuito de suplantar algumas falhas inerentes aos estudos de caso.

Reception by society and the government A more thorough understanding of the reception of homeopathy by society and the government requires some background knowledge on health care in Sweden and Brazil in the first half of the nineteenth century. Chemical knowledge in transit. Honigberger settled in Kolkata the then Calcutta and became popular as Cholera-doctor.

Later, Dr. Sirkar, a reputed Physician of his time, also started practicing Homoeopathy. In , many renowned physicians including Dr. Mujumdar and Dr. Lahiri, Dr. Sarkar and many others made personal efforts in establishing Homoeopathy as a profession.

They are well known for their contribution to the growth of Homoeopathy not only in West Bengal but also in the whole country. Over the years, the number of amateur homoeopathic practitioners grew steadily and most of them approached the Government to accord recognition to Homoeopathy. Later, in the year , the same Assembly adopted yet another resolution about Homoeopathy, which was followed by constitution of the Homoeopathic Enquiry Committee.

In , this Enquiry Committee submitted its report recommending that Central Homoeopathic Council be constituted. In , the Parliament passed the Homoeopathy Central Council Act for regulating homoeopathic education and practice in the country.

Homoeopathy is currently used in over 80 countries. It has legal recognition as an individual system of medicine in 42 countries and is recognized as a part of complementary and alternative medicine in 28 countries.