ABSTRACT
The controversial claim that homeopathic medicines actively stimulate the innate capacity of body and mind for healing and repair demands continuing and energetic investigation. But regardless of the outcome of this scientific controversy, the reported changes associated with applying the homeopathic method are matters of clinical fact. There is thus a case to be made that the homeopathic approach, the way that it studies and construes the experience of illness in individual patients, enriches our understanding of health, illness and healing; and is itself an essential contribution that homeopathy can make to the advancement of medicine. Practitioners and researchers involved in homeopathy can, and should, be more energetic and forceful in making that case.
Subject(s)
Homeopathy , Medicine , Humans , Homeopathy/methodsABSTRACT
The goal of science is truth through knowledge. But medicine's truth is not altogether the same as science's truth.Science works with ideas, imagination and intuition, but essentially has to do with facts. Medicine has also to deal with meaning.This is not an argument for less science in medicine, but for more and better science; better in the sense of better attuned to 'the rest of life'.Truthfulness is a core principle of medical practice and medical science.But a kind of untruthfulness is common in day-to-day clinical practice.The fundamental untruth is the illusion of certainty.The inexcusable untruth is to reduce the patient's problem to it to its narrow biomedical parameters and to allow the patient as a person to vanish from our gaze.Science fails medicine by the narrowness of the scope of things it is willing to investigate. Important areas of medicine have been neglected as a consequence.The medical research culture must change if it is to promote science for understanding alongside science for manipulation. We need to be unsparingly critical of the distinction between useful science and wasteful science."Medical knowledge is not knowledge acquired primarily for its own sake (but) for a specific purpose-the care of the sick."(1.)
Subject(s)
Chronic Disease/therapy , Homeopathy/standards , Humans , Referral and Consultation , Treatment OutcomeABSTRACT
The study and practice of medicine, in its most personal and intimate functions, its most sophisticated scientific and technological manifestations, and its philosophical and ethical ramifications, are central to our understanding of the human condition. Homeopathic medicine: its insights, the questions that it begs, and the scientific and philosophical challenges it presents, has a significant contribution to make to this process. To be actively and seriously engaged with homeopathy is an adventurous undertaking. It is to be engaged in exploring both human nature and the nature of the world we inhabit. And in that process we are also engaged in the pursuit of truth and the exploration of reality. This paper deals first with the layout of the playing field on which homeopathy has to compete to be taken seriously. It then discusses three concepts: reality, truth and knowledge, which are objectives for which we strive and principles that guide us in that striving. In the third part it introduces the concept of 'personal knowledge' as an essential ingredient of scientific discovery and the pursuit of truth. And finally it proposes that the homeopathic community in general, and the Faculty of Homeopathy in particular, must expand its vision with a definition of a new paradigm, the new model of healthcare and medical science to which the vision aspires.
Subject(s)
Evidence-Based Medicine , Homeopathy , Philosophy, Medical , Research Design , Animals , Attitude of Health Personnel , Humans , Materia Medica , Observer Variation , Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic , Societies, MedicalABSTRACT
Los temas que han dominado la discusion de la medicacion homeopatica hasta el momento son la eficacia y la efectividad de las medicinas mismas y el problema de su mecanismo de accion. La resolucion de estos es de...
Subject(s)
Biopathographical History , Natural History of DiseasesABSTRACT
Los temas que han dominado la discusion de la medicacion homeopatica hasta el momento son la eficacia y la efectividad de las medicinas mismas y el problema de su mecanismo de accion. La resolucion de estos es de... (AU)
Subject(s)
Biopathographical History , Natural History of DiseasesSubject(s)
Homeopathy , Medical Records , Publishing , Humans , Learning , Peer Review , Teaching/methodsABSTRACT
The issues which have dominated discussion of homeopathic medicine hitherto are the efficacy and effectiveness of the medicines themselves and the problem of their mechanism of action. The resolution of these is of profound clinical and scientific importance. But... (AU)
