Evidence That Homeopathy Works

There is actually a lot more scientific evidence that homeopathic medicines work than most people realize. There is certainly strong evidence that homeopathic medicines are more than a placebo.
Before discussing formal scientific studies, there are other types of evidence showing that homeopathic medicines are biologically active and clinically therapeutic:

1. Homeopathy gained its greatest popularity in Europe and the U.S. in the 19th century primarily because of the very impressive result shown in treating the infectious-disease epidemics that ravaged populations at that time, including cholera, scarlet fever, yellow fever, and typhoid, among others. It is unlikely that a placebo could be as effective as homeopathic medicines were.
2. Homeopathic medicines are commonly effective in treating acute and chronic conditions in various animals, oftentimes providing dramatic results. While animals can be influenced by tenderness and love, it is unlikely that they would get the same impressive results that veterinarians and others using homeopathic medicines obtain.
3. Homeopathic medicines are commonly effective in treating infants, who are also susceptible to a placebo effect, but once again, the dramatic results that are experienced using homeopathic medicines to treat teething or colicky infants or those suffering from a raging ear infection are rarely experienced with a simple placebo.
4. Approximately 20 percent of people with chronic diseases who are prescribed homeopathic medicines experience a healing crisis; that is, they temporarily experience an exacerbation of certain symptoms prior to a significant improvement in their chronic disease and their overall health. It is rare for people who are given a placebo to have experienced this frequency of initial worsening of symptoms prior to improvement.
In addition to this historical evidence, there is also a body of laboratory experiments that have shown biological activity from homeopathic medicines, and a body of clinical experiments that have shown the efficacy of homeopathic treatment.
In light of clinical studies, a team of German and American physicians and scientists published in The Lancet (September 20, 1997) a review of 89 clinical studies. They found that on average those patients given a homeopathic medicine were 2.45 times more likely to experience a positive result than those given a placebo. This review of research evaluated various experiments that tested the efficacy of homeopathic remedies in the treatment of hay fever, asthma, migraine headache, ear infection, upper respiratory infection, rheumatoid arthritis, diarrhea, indigestion, influenza, childbirth, postsurgical complications, varicose veins, sprains and strains, among many others.
Even a skeptic of homeopathy who responded in The Lancet to this research admitted that this review of research was “completely state of the art.”

Despite the progress that has been made recently in verifying the efficacy of homeopathic medicine, there is still a great need for more research and for replication of these studies by independent researchers.