"Homeopathy is not placebo effect": proof of the scientific evidence for homeopathy [Editorial]
Rev. Assoc. Med. Bras. (1992, Impr.); 70 (4), 2024
Publication year: 2024
Homeopathy has been a medical practice recognized worldwide for more than two centuries, providing care, teaching, and research activities in several health institutions and medical schools. It employs a clinical approach based on non-conventional and complementary scientific principles (principle of therapeutic similitude, homeopathic pathogenetic experimentation, and use of dynamized doses and individualized medicines), with the aim of awakening a curative response from the body against its own disorders or diseases1. Homeopathy proposes to understand and treat the sick-disease binomial according to a vitalist, globalizing, and humanist anthropological approach, valuing the different aspects of the sick individuality (mental, general, and physical) and contributes to maintain health and organic homeostasis, acting as a therapeutic alternative for various health disorders2,3. However, to achieve this objective, homeopathic therapy must be well conducted and follow the epistemological premises of the homeopathic model1, among which include applying therapeutic similitude/similarity between the set of signs and symptoms of the sick individual (characteristic symptomatic totality of the sick-disease binomial) and the set of pathogenetic signs and symptoms caused by the medicine in the healthy individual (homeopathic pathogenetic experimentation), meaning individualized homeopathic treatment.