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Spongeworthiness
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Says Buot: "He had what was essentially a messy mucus plug in his ear. It can be very painful and, when not treated, dangerous. I took my son to a conventional doctor who was adamant about treating him with antibiotics. I took the prescription but never filled it. Instead I used a combination of ferrum phosphoricum, aviaire and arsenicum album. When I went back to the same doctor to check on my son's ear, the doctor was overjoyed. 'Your son's ear is perfect,' he said. I never told him that I'd actually used homeopathy."

Buot is among the roughly 40 percent of the French population who use homeopathic medicine to treat everything from colds, flu and measles to depression, anxiety and insomnia. The same percentage of clinical physicians regularly use homeopathy in their practices, and the French government reimburses the cost of homeopathic medicines. Indeed, collections of substances in thin tubes and vials with curious Latin names -- belladonna, bryonia and pulsatilla -- are as common in French homes as spice racks.

While the French remain the world's largest consumers of homeopathy (and also the biggest consumers of pharmaceutical products in the industrialized world, an apparent contradiction that is particular to the French), the U.S. homeopathic market is growing quickly. According to the National Center for Homeopathy, sales of homeopathic products in the United States increased from $170 million in 1995 to $400 million in 1999. Still, despite the colossal boom in alternative health care in America (a market estimated at $18 billion), homeopathy remains a mystery to many in this country.

What exactly is homeopathy? In the late 1700s Samuel Hahnemann, a German physician disenchanted with contemporary health care, set off on a quest to study the effects of various natural substances on his body. To avoid problems of toxicity he used substances at smaller and smaller doses, thereby establishing a fundamental aspect of homeopathy -- infinitesimal dilutions.

Hahnemann was convinced that "the same things which cause the disease cure it" -- a principle espoused by Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C. Hahnemann's first experiment with the plant cinchona to cure the symptoms brought on by ingesting the same plant was decisive. He went on to study an entire range of plant, mineral and animal substances on himself, and eventually created the foundation of what would later become the official Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia still used today.

Hahnemann influenced an entire generation of European and American health practitioners. By the mid-1800s there were several homeopathic medical colleges in Europe and the United States, and one in five doctors used homeopathy, especially to fight cholera epidemics. While the move toward a more mechanistic view of the body and the growing use of pharmaceuticals eventually pushed homeopathy into obscurity in the United States (by the late 1940s homeopathy courses were virtually nonexistent), successive generations of European clinical physicians and pharmacists inspired by Hahnemann's work created the bedrock on which homeopathy thrives today on the Continent, particularly in France.

Simply put, homeopathy involves treating a patient with infinitesimal doses of a substance similar to that which caused the illness in the first place. In this general way homeopathy shares the same premise as vaccination: that it is possible to cure a patient of a disease by administering the same substance that would induce that disease in him if he were well. The National Center for Homeopathy uses as an example a plant root called ipecacuanha, which means "the plant by the road that makes you throw up"; eating it causes vomiting. If a woman experiencing morning sickness is not relieved by natural vomiting, then ipecacuanha, administered in extremely small doses in accordance with Food and Drug Administration guidelines, can allay her "similar" suffering.

Dana Ullman is a leading spokesman for homeopathy, an author and an advisory board member of alternative-medicine institutes at Harvard's and Columbia's schools of medicine. He uses a musical metaphor to describe the homeopathic law of "similars": "If one piano is at one end of a room and if one strikes the C key, the C notes in another piano in the same room will reverberate. This experiment works because each key is hypersensitive to vibrations in its own key. This is called 'resonance.'"

Ullman adds that the body's symptoms are, in fact, a defense -- "the body [trying] to fight a particular stress," he says. "With traditional medicine symptoms are wrong, must be managed, stopped. We look for homeopathic medicines that mimic the symptoms. Homeopathic medicines will only work when a person has a hypersensitivity to them. This individually chosen medicine represents the same frequency as the person, and the energetics of the medicine can augment a powerful immune and healing response."

"Energetics" is a buzzword used by many in the alternative-health field these days. According to author and physician Andrew Weil, "energy medicine" like homeopathy is one of the major medical developments of the 21st century. The energetics of homeopathy involves factoring into the diagnosis equation various psychological and emotional aspects of a person's disposition.

Says Ullman: "It seems that most conventional physicians have been schooled in the 'Marie Antoinette' college of medicine, where they understand the body and head as two separate entities. Disease is a complex process that affects the whole person. Homeopaths do indeed seek to uncover various psychological symptoms as well as various idiosyncratic physical symptoms. These symptoms are 'signs' and 'signals' of the disease, and very relevant information about a person's 'body-mind' metabolism. Homeopathy is based on the totality of physical and psychological characteristics that define the person."

Next page | "Sounds good, but it's all about placebos"