Subscribe to RSS
DOI: 10.1016/j.homp.2015.02.003
Unequal brothers : are homeopathy and hormesis linked?
Publication History
Received01 June 2014
revised27 January 2015
accepted03 February 2015
Publication Date:
23 December 2017 (online)
The debate between those who believe homeopathy and hormesis derive from the same root and those who believe the two are different phenomena is as old as hormesis. It is an emotionally loaded discussion, with both sides fielding arguments which are far from scientific. Careful analysis of the basic paradigms of the two systems questions the claim of the homeopaths, who find similarities between them. The authors discuss these paradigms, indicating the differences between the claims of homeopathy and hormesis.
It is time for thorough and serious research to lay this question to rest. One possible approach is to compare the activity of a hormetic agent, prepared in the usual way, with that of the same agent in the same concentration prepared homeopathically by serial dilution and succussion.
-
References
- 1 http://www.udh-bundesverband.de/files/vkhdinterview102303022011.pdf.
- 2 http://www.diss.fu-berlin.de/diss/servlets/MCRFileNodeServlet/FUDISS_derivate_000000010973/Doktorarbeit_Nils_Mengler_EV.pdf?hosts=local.
- 3 Calabrese E.J. Historical blunders: how toxicology got the dose-response relationship half right. Cell Mol Biol (Noisy-le-grand) 2005; 51: 643-654.
- 4 Hahnemann S. Organon of the Healing Art. 1833. W.F. Wakeman; Dublin: 48-49 pp. iii.
- 5 Hahnemann S. Organon of the Healing Art. aphorism 269.
- 6 Hahnemann S. Organon of the Healing Art. aphorism 2.
- 7 Calabrese E.J. Paradigm lost, paradigm found: the reemergence of hormesis as a fundamental dose–response model in the toxicological sciences. Environ Pollut 2005; 138: 378-411.
- 8 Calabrese E.J., Baldwin L.A. The dose determines the stimulation (and poison): development of a chemical hormesis database. Int J Toxicol 1997; 16: 545-559.
- 9 Southam C.M., Ehrlich J. Effects of extracts of western red-cedar heartwood on certain wood-decaying fungi in culture. Phytopathology 1943; 33: 517-524.
- 10 Calabrese E.J., Baldwin L.A. Hormesis: U-shaped dose-response and their centrality in toxicology. Trends Pharmacol Sci 2001; 22: 285-291.
- 11 Calabrese E.J., Baldwin L.A., Holland C.D. Hormesis: a highly generalizable and reproducible phenomenon with important implications for risk assessment. Risk Anal 1999; 19: 261-280.
- 12 Calabrese E.J., Baldwin L.A. The marginalization of hormesis. Toxicol Pathol 1999; 27: 187-194.
- 13 M1, Oberbaum M, Singer S.R., Vithoulkas G. The colour of the homeopathic improvement: the multidimensional nature of the response to homeopathic therapy. Homeopathy 2005; (03) 94 Jul 196-199.