homeopathy

System of alternative medicine based on the belief that symptoms of disease are part of the body's self-healing processes, and on the practice of administering extremely diluted doses of natural substances found to produce in a healthy person the symptoms manifest in the illness being treated. Developed by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), the system is widely practised today as an alternative to allopathic (orthodox) medicine. However, its principles are incompatible with modern science and despite its popularity it seems to rely almost entirely on the placebo effect for any successful treatment.

In 1992, the German health authority, the Bundesgesundheitsamt, banned 50 herbal and homeopathic remedies containing alkaloids because they are toxic, and set dose limits on 550 other natural remedies.