Allopathy

One of the core aims of conventional medicine is that treatment attempts to counter-act the symptoms evident in a disease, in an effort to create a condition that is different from the one that caused the disease in the first place. So any imbalance in the patient is countered by direct intervention to correct the balance. This can be by the introduction of food, fluids, or drugs, by raising or lowering the body temperature, or by depriving the body of something. Such treatment is termed allopathic.

Allopathy was defined by German physician Samuel Hahnemann as "the curing of a diseased action by the inducing of another or a different action, yet not necessarily diseased". Problems arise when such treatment fails to distinguish properly between physiological conditions that are the cause of the problem and those which are a natural part of the self-healing process. It was this deficiency that led Hahnemann to develop Homeopathy which is founded on the principle of treating like with like.

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