The idea is to make free homeopathy books available to the community in an electronic form and to make them easily searchable so that our students & teachers can find the relevant information quickly and easily. Also, it will serve as a free resource to learn homeopathy online.
If you are an author and have a ebook (pdf ebooks, kindle books) or a paper book or an old journal that is out of print now, you can make it available to the homeopathic community through this online library so that people can continue to benefit from your work.
homeopathy books in urdu pdf
Right now, all the homeopathy ebooks here are in English but we are willing to expand in other languages like French, German, Spanish and Indian languages like Tamil, Telgu, Marathi, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu etc.
Homeopathy is one of the most frequently used but controversial forms of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). It is based on the ancient 'principle of similars'. Highly diluted preparations of substances that cause symptoms in healthy individuals are used to stimulate healing reactions in patients who display similar symptoms when ill [1]. In classical homeopathy a single homeopathic remedy is selected, based on a patient's total spectrum of symptoms [2]. The proportion of patients obtaining homeopathic care has quadrupled in the last seven years according to a US survey [3]. For Germany a recent survey demonstrated that approximately 10% of men and 20% of women in the general population used homeopathic medicines during the previous year [4]. To date, few studies have evaluated the use of complementary therapies in geriatric patients [5]. In Germany, 73% of adults over 60 years of age use naturopathic drugs [6, 7]. There is little information about the safety and efficacy of these interventions, especially if they are combined with conventional therapies [8].
In a prospective, multicentre cohort study involving 38 primary care practices with additional specialisation in homeopathy in Germany and Switzerland, in this subgroup analysis data was analysed from all patients being 70 years or older consulting the physician for the first time. Patients were included consecutively at their first consultation with a participating physician and were followed up for a total of 24 months. In order to provide as representative a picture of homeopathic health care as possible, patients were included in the study regardless of their diagnosis. Sixty-eight percent of all approached patients agreed to participate in the study. For description of the selection process see [10].
In order to participate in the study, physicians were required to have certified training in classical homeopathy and at least three years practical experience, they all followed the principles of classical homeopathy. All homeopathic physicians worked in their own doctor's offices, hospital services were not included. A total of 187 physicians belonging to four different working groups were contacted either by post or telephone and informed about the study. Of these, 103 physicians chose to participate.
All questionnaires were designed to document sociodemographic data, as well as information on prior medical history, patient symptoms and complaints, quality of life, and the use of any treatment other than homeopathy. At baseline, patients recorded the complaints that led them to consider homeopathic treatment. Independently of their physicians, patients rated the severity of their complaints as they experienced them on a numeric rating scale (NRS, 0 = no complaints, 10 = maximum severity of complaints the patient could imagine for this disease) [12]. All complaints listed by patients in their baseline questionnaire were transferred to their follow-up questionnaires by the study office personnel, which ensured that each baseline complaint was assessed at each subsequent follow-up. General health-related quality of life was assessed using the MOS SF-36 questionnaire [13]. The results of the SF-36 are presented in normalised scores, the results being scaled in such a way that the normal German population, in the age group considered, has a mean score of 50 and a standard deviation of 10. (As quality of life is considerably lower in this age group than in the whole population this normalisation should not be confused with a normalisation of the whole German population).
Each patient received on average 6.1 5.3 (not necessarily different) homeopathic remedies. Prescriptions were given consecutively following the principles of classical homeopathy. More than half of all prescriptions were covered by 9 homeopathic remedies (Figure 1). The most frequently prescribed homeopathic potencies were C200 (31.3%), C1000 (13.5%), C30 (12.7%) and Q1 (9.9%). Eighty-two percent of the patients were taking medication at baseline (38% cardiovascular, 16% for central nervous system, 16% gastrointestinal and metabolic, 30% others), the number of prescribed drugs remained stable across 24 months (baseline: mean 2.6 2.2 (SD); 3 months: 2.3 2.0; 12 months: 2.0 2.2; 24 months 2.3 2.1).
To our knowledge, the present study is the first to systematically evaluate the range of diagnoses and therapies in classical homeopathic medical practices in Germany and Switzerland in patients over 70 years old. A strength of this study is that patients with all diagnoses were included. Therefore, no disease-specific measurement instruments could be used. To assess the severity of different medical complaints, there is no other generally accepted measuring instrument available. Instead numerical rating scales [12] were applied, which would allow for the determination of the severity of the complaint in a diagnosis-independent manner. However, our data may be helpful in the planning of further research on homeopathy including randomized clinical trials on the effectiveness of individually chosen homeopathic remedies. These trials however should include tailored instruments which measure treatment effects more specifically than the rather global measures we employed in this study.
There might be some selection bias because the homeopaths belong to a group using only classical homeopathy. Other forms of homeopathy, for example, clinical homeopathy are more focused on the primary disease symptoms, treat more often acute diseases and have shorter case taking and use a smaller range of homeopathic drugs. In addition information bias might be possible because we follow the assumption that missing values are per random, this might result in a underestimation or overestimation of effect. A further limitation of our study might be that 65.1% of our elderly patients had a strong belief in homoeopathy. This might have triggered the therapeutic outcome due to high therapeutic expectations.
We were unable to confirm the common notion that homeopathy is frequently used for trivial complaints or diseases. The duration of disease in our study patients was very long and their symptoms were, on average, of moderate severity. The spectrum of complaints is clearly age-related and differs from the total sample of all adult patients: in women (n = 2017) the most frequent diagnoses were migraine (9.7%), headache (9.1%), sleep disturbances (7.5%) and eczema (7.3%); in men (n = 834) allergic rhinitis (10.3%), eczema (7.8%), hypertension (7.7%) and sleep disturbances (6.5%) [10].
In cancer patients homeopathy has rarely been studied systematically. A Cochrane Review of homeopathic medicines for adverse effects of cancer treatments found eight randomised controlled studies with mixed results [8]. A second systematic review concluded that the "evidence is encouraging but not convincing" [9]. The effects of homeopathy on quality of life in cancer patients has been studied very rarely. Only two randomised trials used it as a secondary outcome, one with and one without positive results [10], [11]. A retrospective hypotheses generating study in a clinic specialising in the homeopathic care of cancer patients found that the majority of patients indicated that they had improved in QoL due to their homeopathic treatment, as well as in fatigue symptoms and psychological well-being (Rostock M, Hinrichs I, Walach H.: Homeopathic treatment of cancer patients: a retrospective analysis, submitted).
Over a period of 30 months all new patients who chose treatment either in two clinics specialising in homeopathic care (Clinica Santa Croce, Orselina, Switzerland, and Homeopathic Centre Oberland-Klinik, Weilheim, Germany) or in two conventional specialised oncological outpatient clinics with cancer care according to state of the art (Clinic for Interdisciplinary Oncology and Hematology, Freiburg, Germany, and Clinic for Oncology and Hematology, Offenburg, Germany) were approached and included in a prospective observational study, once they had given informed consent. All patients received the normal standard of care offered in each place without any experimental intervention or interference with the treatment plan. The homeopathic clinics offered a constitutional homeopathic treatment according to the principles of classical homeopathy accompanying or following conventional cancer treatment. This consisted in an inpatient stay of approximately one to two weeks for the purpose of finding the correct remedy and phone consultations after patients had gone back home. Details of the treatment have been published elsewhere [12, 13].
A previous retrospective pilot-study had shown that we can expect a good patient participation in the homeopathic clinic with roughly 200 patients in two years. However, we had no indication of a prospective effect size to go by and hence opted for a feasible number of 200 homeopathy patients recruited over a two year period. We aimed at a core of at least 40 matched pairs and hence at a recruitment of 800 to 1000 patients from the conventional clinics, a figure mentioned as realistic by the participating recruitment centres in several planning meetings. The study was conducted according to Good Clinical Practice (GCP) and the declaration of Helsinki. It was approved by the ethics committee of the University Hospital Freiburg, Germany and the respective local committees of Bellinzona, Switzerland and Stuttgart, Germany. 2ff7e9595c
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