Table 1.

The homeopathic simile and regulation of body homeodynamics

(a)Homeopathy is a therapeutic method based on the application of the similia principle, utilizing medicinal substances that, in healthy subjects, produce effects that are similar to the symptoms being treated in ill subjects.

(b)When a healthy organism is perturbed by every physical, chemical, or biological stressor, it produces characteristic signs and symptoms; when caused by a drug, this is regarded as an expression of iatrogenic response or pathophysiological reaction (‘proving’ in the homeopathic medical system).

(c)The provings that describe the characteristic patterns of signs and symptoms, caused in healthy subjects by a number of mineral, vegetable and animal compounds, have been gathered during the past two centuries in the homeopathic ‘Materia Medica’.

(d)When threatened by natural disorder or disease, living organisms show signs and symptoms which are mainly the expression of the efforts to re-establish normal homeodynamics at cellular, tissue and systemic levels including the mind. In chronic conditions, the symptoms also reflect the failure of those efforts, the blockade of regulation system(s), and the pathological adaptation to the disease.

(e)Low doses or high dilutions of a substance which is capable of evoking certain symptoms in healthy subjects, when administered to subjects showing similar symptoms due to natural diseases, may evoke a specific and global secondary healing reaction, thus becoming a potentially effective therapeutic agent.