Conventional medicine has traditionally been referred to as "allopathic" by homeopaths. In Greek "pathos" means suffering or illness, "allo" means different and "homeo" means same. Allopathic medicines work by giving a treatment whose properties are different from the illness in question, whereas homeopathic medicines utilize treatments with the same properties as the illness in question. Here are some of the main differences between the two approaches.
- Homeopathic: medicines have similar biological effects to the illness.
- Allopathic: medicines have different biological effects from the illness.
- Homeopathic: medicines initiate a self-healing process, acting indirectly on the diseased cells and organs of the body.
- Allopathic: medicines act directly upon the tissues and the cells of the body, without any effects upon the body's healing powers.
- Homeopathic: Medicines can heal the diseased tissues or remove the biological tendency to develop the disease (i.e., medicines can cure).
- Allopathic: Medicines counter the effects of pathological tendencies of the body, but do not change the tendencies themselves. Medicines can cure, but rarely, and usually not without destroying cells in the process.
- Homeopathic: Medicines are taken in general infrequently, and only as often as needed.
- Allopathic: Medicines (for chronic illness) are taken continuously and indefinitely.
- Homeopathic: Medicines are free of side effects and toxicity.
- Allopathic: Medicines may cause side effects in some cases and in the worst cases, may hasten or lead to death from toxicity.
- Homeopathic: There is not a division made between mental and physical aspects of of health. The whole person is always treated.
- Allopathic: The mental and physical are felt to be sometimes overlapping or mutually influencing but separate areas of health, treated by different specialists.
- Homeopathic: Concurrent symptoms and illnesses are treated together as multiple manifestations of the underlying disease state by only one medicine.
- Allopathic: Concurrent symptoms or illnesses are considered "comorbid" meaning that they are simultaneously occurring but not necessarily related, and require the use of multiple medications or treatments, at least one for each condition.
- Homeopathic: illness is felt to be a mere sign of biological imbalance which remedies try to correct. Conventionally defined "illness" is merely the reification of the imbalance.
- Allopathic: illness as defined conventionally is felt to be a valid existential construct, equivalent to the sum of symptoms and physical manifestations.
- Homeopathic: addresses the underlying cause, and attempts to cure the illness.
- Allopathic: usually palliates the symptoms of illness, without addressing the underlying cause.
