PHYTOTHERAPY AND HOMEOPATHY: KNOW THE BEST
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The term comes from the greek herbal medicine phyton (plant) and therapeia (care). The herbal medicine, also called phytomedicine, is a therapeutic practice that involves the use of plants or plant extracts for the treatment of diseases or for the maintenance of well-being.
Ancient practice, which most likely represents the first example of a human therapeutic practice, it is common to all cultures and peoples since prehistoric times and has a widespread geographical distribution. The therapeutic use of plants, in fact, is found in all human therapeutic systems, from the most ancient and based on observation and empiricism, to the most sophisticated and high levels of complexity theory to the modern biomedicine.
In European Union member states, with the exception of Great Britain, the term phytotherapist has no legal value, and herbal medicine is not a recognized branch of biomedicine.
Phytotherapy is considered an alternative or complementary medicine in most of the EU member states and the United States, although some plants and especially some fraction of the plant are also recognized and used by the traditional scientific medicine.
Homeopathy (a term that derives from the greek ὅμοιος, similar, and πÜθος, suffering) is an alternative therapeutic method, whose theoretical principles have been formulated by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann in the late eighteenth century.
At the base of homeopathy there is the so-called principle of similarity of the drug ("similia similibus curantur"), concept devoid of scientific confirmation set out by the same Hahnemann, according to which the appropriate remedy for a particular disease would be given by a substance that, in a healthy person, causes symptoms similar to those observed in the sick person. This substance, also known as "homeopathic principle", once identified, is administered to the patient in an amount greatly diluted the extent of dilution is defined by homeopaths "power."
There are at present rigorous experimentation to support the assertion that homeopathy has any effect can not be explained by the placebo effect. Nevertheless, the homeopathic medicine is widely followed in many European countries and, where they have not already been approved (as in France), there are several Bills that provide for the distribution of these drugs assisted by the national health service.
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