page_title: Homeopathy
section_title: Pills and active ingredients
hierarchical_section_title: Homeopathy / Preparations and treatment / Pills and active ingredients
caption_attribution_description: dose globules de 1 gramme
context_page_description: Homeopathy or homoeopathy is a pseudoscientific system of alternative medicine. It was created in 1796 by Samuel Hahnemann. Its practitioners, called homeopaths, believe that a substance that causes symptoms of a disease in healthy people would cure similar symptoms in sick people; this doctrine is called similia similibus curentur, or "like cures like". Homeopathic preparations are termed remedies and are made using homeopathic dilution. In this process, a chosen substance is repeatedly and thoroughly diluted. The final product is chemically indistinguishable from the diluent, which is usually either distilled water, ethanol or sugar; often, not even a single molecule of the original substance can be expected to remain in the product. Between the dilution iterations homeopaths practice hitting and/or violently shaking the product, and claim that it makes the diluent remember the original substance after its removal. Practitioners claim that such preparations, upon oral intake, can treat or cure disease.
context_section_description: Homeopathic pills are made from an inert substance (often sugars, typically lactose), upon which a drop of liquid homeopathic preparation is placed and allowed to evaporate.
  The process of homeopathic dilution results in no objectively detectable active ingredient in most cases, but some preparations (e.g. calendula and arnica creams) do contain pharmacologically active doses. One product, Zicam Cold Remedy, which was marketed as an "unapproved homeopathic" product, contains two ingredients that are only "slightly" diluted: zinc acetate (2X = 1/100 dilution) and zinc gluconate (1X = 1/10 dilution), which means both are present in a biologically active concentration strong enough to have caused some people to lose their sense of smell, a condition termed anosmia. Zicam also listed several normal homeopathic potencies as "inactive ingredients", including galphimia glauca, histamine dihydrochloride (homeopathic name, histaminum hydrochloricum), luffa operculata, and sulfur.
caption: Homeopathic pills, homeopathic preparation oscillococcinum
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