History of Homeopathy

[Heretic_Cata]

I need a sorta short question thread about this ... so:

In this book i've read it says that Paracelsus was the guy who promoted homeopathy as an alternative medicine. (the book is a dictionary of esoteric stuff )
Recently i asked a med school student, who started the use of homeopathy ? He said Paracelsus also.

So i looked at the wiki page and i saw it was created by some guy, 3 centuries after Paracelsus.

(yea, i didn't read the whole article but i ran a search and didn't find any mention about him)

So does anyone have a clue about this ?

 

[Verbose]

I'd go with wiki on this.

The guys mentioned in the article formulated it.

There might have been similar ideas and principles that Paracelsus toyed with that predates them, but Paracelsus tried all kinds of stuff, and any kinf of homeopathy wasn't a big item for him as far as I can tell.

(He's more important as an early exponent of empiricism in medicine (a nasty break with scholastic medicine there) and for introducing some pretty powerful chemicals into medical therapy when doctor's orders for centuries had traditionally been to simply try to fortify the sufferer of an illness and help the body heal itself, if it could.)

 

[Plotinus]

It depends on what you mean by "homeopathy". If you're talking about it in the strict sense of using substances to treat symptoms that they normally cause, then yes, Hahnemann's the man, and Paracelsus had nothing to do with it. But if you're talking about "homeopathy" in the broader sense of using plants and things as medicines, then Paracelsus does have an important place. He was the first person to argue that diseases might be caused by external agents, and that they might be cured by external agents too. Previously, medical theory had held that illness is caused by imbalances within the body. Of course, Paracelsus hardly invented the use of herbs for healing. People had used herbs for many centuries; but this sort of thing had been ignored by the intelligentsia. So Paracelsus was an iconoclast, on this as on so much else, since the scholastic theory remained the primary one for centuries to come.

Of course, the real Renaissance authority on herblore is Nicholas Culpeper.

 

[Methos]

Remember that Wiki can be edited by anyone at anytime. Just because you've found where it states that in the Wiki doesn't mean its necessarily correct. If I were you I'd look elsewhere for a better source and use Wiki as a way to further question your subject.

Anyone can edit it, and just because it is extremely well written doesn't mean its correct.

"How credible can any item be in a reference work if it's only as accurate as the last edits from the most recent anonymous visitor?" - Theodore Pappas, eecutive editor, Encyclopedia Britannica from the article "When the Wiki hits the fan" in CPU magazine (July 2006)

 

[Plotinus]

Wikipedia is actually very poor for anything other than the most general of general overviews. It's generally OK when it comes to dates and other things that it's hard to get wrong, but it's full of inaccuracies. The Guardian had an article a little while ago where they had experts on various subjects evaluate the Wikipedia articles, and they weren't exactly complimentary. I've rewritten quite a few articles myself but really the whole thing is a bit of a disaster.

And I don't think most of it is well written at all - in fact it's brimming over with spelling and grammar errors, not to mention inelegant sentences. Worse than CFC!

 

[YNCS]

Four or five years ago I wrote the wiki article on submarines. A month or so ago, I looked at it. Someone else had completely rewritten it, introducing several errors of fact. I corrected these errors and within a week the someone else revised my revisions.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

But, usual wikipedia inaccuracies* aside - there is no doubt that Hahnemann, and not a genius like Paracelsus, is to blame for that bs. The entire theory could only be developed in the 19th century's Romanticism, together with other great cures like Kneipp or Silesian Light Therapy.
Remember the central dogma of homeopathia is "similia similibus curentur"; and this requires the fact that external agents cause/cure diseases to be thourougly accepted.


*And btw, almost nothing is as inaccurate as medical topics, especially in de.wiki, since those articles get permanently molested by what I tend to call "paramedical mafia". For example, don't even try to use a valid medical term that has a slightly derrogative meaning in its common use, like schwachsinnig/"weak minded" - you'll get shot at sight. Wonder how the chemical articles get away with terms like 'impure'...

 

[Heretic_Cata]

The book i am quoting is a romanian translation of Pierre Riffard's - Dictionnaire de l'Esoterisme :
(i skiped the etymology)
"Homeopathy = method of medical treatment that has a basis and esoteric aspects due to his promoter (Paracelsus), it's main principle (similia similibus curentur), it's action (over subtle bodies, being based on the notion of infinitezimal* dose), it's own method of diagnosys."
*= I have no idea how to translate that.

That's exactly what it says in the book i was talking about.

Plotinus is probably right, and the book is refering to the broader sense of the term. And that is probably why Paracelsus got in the definition.