Miasmas, germs, homeopathy and hormesis: Commentary on the relationship between homeopathy and hormesis

Abstract

Is hormesis related to homeopathy? Despite the superficial similarity of the low dose of the applied stimulus, there are compelling reasons for maintaining hormesis and homeopathy as unrelated. Homeopathy originated in the medical knowledge vacuum of the 19th century, prior to the acceptance of the germ/gene bases of disease. Homeopathy was never grounded on empirical scientific evidence. Hormesis, on the other hand, has always been an empirical science, involving properly controlled experiments. Hormesis is a concept in toxicology that involves biphasic dose responses in biological systems, wherein low doses of stressors can have beneficial effects and higher doses have harmful effects. Hormesis, as it applies to toxicology, is a necessary and useful concept describing adaptive organismic responses to applied stressors. Conversely, homeopathy is a medical doctrine based on the erroneous belief that substances which cause the symptoms of a disorder will cure the disorder when given to patients in small doses. To suggest that homeopathy is a form of post-exposure conditioning hormesis assumes that homeopathic practitioners employed the scientific method with measurable experimental end-points and proper controls, and that their ‘provings’ had actually determined the correct compound, at the correct dose, required to cure a disorder. Because many homeopathic preparations are diluted to a point where none of the starting solutes would likely remain, the idea of a beneficial or harmful hormetic dose becomes moot. Without supporting scientific evidence for the efficacy or purported mechanisms of homeopathy, the term hormesis should not be linked with it in any way.