April 10 is celebrated as World Homeopathy Day as that day is birth day of the founder of that pseudo science, Samuel Hahnemann.

Though it is faith-based and not evidence based, homeopathy is very popular in Indian sub continent. Its popularity is sustained by heavy government funding. India, it is believed, have 195 homeopathy teaching institutions and around 250 thousand registered practitioners. To know the level of state support you need only to see the details of this national event that is being held in New Delhi.

 

Sadly, in India, many atheists are also believers of homeopathy. Their rationality helped them in disbelieving in god, but failed in evaluating medical systems. May be if they had really read Hahnemann, they would have realised that his aphorisms are very much similar to verses in holy books, no evidence but just proclamations.

For example  let us look at Hahnemann’ aphorism12 and its explanation.

The pathological manifestations accessible to our senses express all the internal changes, i.e., the whole pathological disturbance of the dynamis: the reveal the whole disease. It is only the pathologically untuned vital force that causes diseases.

Conversely, the cessation through treatment of all the symptoms, i.e., the disappearance of all perceptible deviations from health, necessarily implies that the vital principle has recovered its integrity and therefore that the whole organism has returned to health. Conversely, the cessation through treatment of all the symptoms, i.e., the disappearance of all perceptible deviations from health, necessarily implies that the vital principle has recovered its integrity and therefore that the whole organism has returned to health. a. How does the vital force bring the organism to produce symptoms, i.e., how does it make disease? Such questions are of no value to the physician. The answers will always be hidden from him. The Master and lord of life has revealed to his senses only what is necessary and completely sufficient to cure diseases.

The founder of homeopathy is saying it is only necessary to treat symptoms to cure disease. He opines that there is no point in finding out how symptoms are produced, because it cannot be found out. The creator hides answers to such questions. He reveals only what is necessary and sufficient to cure diseases.

So when a homeopath or its fans claim to you that homeopathy is a holistic system and there is preventive care in homeopathy, just point him out to above aphorism. As per homeopathy how can there be a disease when there are no symptoms? Homeopathy treat patients as per their symptoms. So how can there be a preventive Homeopathy treatment in healthy individuals?  How can homeopathy be called holistic when it aim only to get symptomatic relief ?