In 2010, a parliamentary committee asked the UK Ministry of Health to remove homeopathic products from the list of Saxenda in stock Australia reimbursed, but despite the support of an expert strongly opposed to homeopathy, Edzard Ernst, the withdrawal was not effective In 2012, the Ministry of Health believing that these products met an existing demand (Clarke, 2001).
In France, authorization to place single homeopathic products on the market is not necessary, since registration with the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) is sufficient. However, if the supplier of the homeopathic product must guarantee its safety, evidence of its therapeutic efficacy is not required, unlike conventional medicines.
In 1796, the Saxon physician Samuel Hahnemann laid the foundations of homeopathy in an essay and it was in 1810 that he completed his theory with the publication of Organon der Heilkunst (Organon de l’Art de Cure).
In the 1830s, homeopathy began to spread in France, but also in the United States. Pharmacists refusing to make these products, the disciples of Hahnemann had to make them themselves. In France, Doctor Comte Sébastien Des Guidi30 created the Société Homéopathique Lyonnaise in 1830. His pupils were at the origin of the development of homeopathy in France. These include Dr. Dufresne, Petroz, Curie, Mabit, (Hahnemann, 1833).
At the death of Hahnemann in 1843, homeopathy declined slightly in Europe but developed in the United States and it was only at the beginning of the 20th century, with the appearance of the first laboratories and then the enthusiasm for the Alternative medicine, that it began its industrial history and spread widely to patients.
By semantic shift, the term “homeopathic” has become synonymous with a minimal dose of a product, in reference to one of the characteristics of homeopathy, whereas the original meaning of the term homeopathy is treated according to the Principle of similarity: The substance chosen to treat the sick person is called “homeopathic” (Atwood, 2008).
Hahnemann (Fig. 1) was baptized on the very day of his birth on April 11, 1755, in the Lutheran church of Meissen. He was the third child of Christian Gottfried Hahnemann and his second wife, Johanna Christiane Spieß. His father, a porcelain painter in the famous porcelain factory in Meissen, watched over his education up to the age of ten.
He then attended the municipal school, where he showed a gift for languages, for Latin and Greek first, then for French, English and Italian. He then received a scholarship at the princely school of St. Afra in Meissen. When he left, in 1775 he began medical studies in Leipzig, earning his living through language courses and translations into German of physiology and medicine.
A year later he went to the University of Vienna for three quarters, where until the money failed him he attended Baron Joseph von Quarin, a professor of medicine and medicine, at the bedside of the sick. Medical director of the Hospital of the Brothers of Charity (Hahnemann, 1833). In October 1777, Baron Samuel von Brukenthal, whom the Empress Maria Theresa had just appointed Governor of Transylvania, offered him a position as a librarian and a personal physician.
Hahnemann accompanied him to Hermannstadt (identical to Sibiu, in Romania) and remained there for almost two years. He apparently saw many cases of malaria and he would have fallen ill himself (which is important for his tests with cinchona). During his stay at Hermannstadt, he joined the Masonic lodge St Andrew of the three Lotus.