Allopathic medicine

Allopathic medicine, or allopathy, is a term which refers to science-based, modern medicine, such as the use of medications or surgery to treat or suppress symptoms or the ill effects of disease. There are regional variations in usage of the term. In the United States, the term is used to contrast with osteopathic medicine, especially in the field of medical education.One form of verbal warfare used in retaliation by irregulars was the word 'allopathy.' ...'Allopathy' and 'allopathic' were liberally employed as pejoratives by all irregular physicians of the nineteenth century, and the terms were considered highly offensive by those at whom they were directed. The generally uncomplaining acceptance of 'allopathic medicine' by today's physicians is an indication of both a lack of awareness of the term's historical use and the recent thawing of relations between irregulars and allopaths. Allopathic medicine, or allopathy, is a term which refers to science-based, modern medicine, such as the use of medications or surgery to treat or suppress symptoms or the ill effects of disease. There are regional variations in usage of the term. In the United States, the term is used to contrast with osteopathic medicine, especially in the field of medical education. The expression was coined in 1810 by the creator of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. It was originally used by homeopaths in the nineteenth century as a derogatory term for heroic medicine, the traditional European medicine of the time, which attempted to treat disease symptoms using 'harsh and abusive' methods to cause symptoms opposite to those produced by the disease, rather than treating their underlying cause. Among homeopaths and other alternative medicine advocates, the expression 'allopathic medicine' is now used to refer to 'the broad category of medical practice that is sometimes called Western medicine, biomedicine, evidence-based medicine, or modern medicine.' Allopathic medicine and allopathy (from the Greek prefix ἄλλος, állos, 'other,' 'different' + the suffix πάθος, páthos, 'suffering') are terms coined in the early 19th century by Samuel Hahnemann, the inventor of homeopathy, as a synonym for the European heroic medicine, the mainstream medicine of the time. Heroic medicine was based on balance of the four 'humours' (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) where disease was caused by an excess of one humour, and would thus be treated with its opposite. This description continued to be used to describe anything that was not homeopathy. The practice of medicine in both Europe and North America during the early 19th century is sometimes referred to as heroic medicine because of the extreme measures (such as bloodletting) sometimes employed in an effort to treat diseases. The term allopath was used by Hahnemann and other early homeopaths to highlight the difference they perceived between homeopathy and the 'conventional' heroic medicine of their time. With the term allopathy (meaning 'other than the disease'), Hahnemann intended to point out how physicians with conventional training employed therapeutic approaches that, in his view, merely treated symptoms and failed to address the disharmony produced by underlying disease. Homeopaths saw such symptomatic treatments as 'opposites treating opposites' and believed these methods were harmful to patients. Practitioners of alternative medicine have used the term 'allopathic medicine' to refer to the practice of conventional medicine in both Europe and the United States since the 19th century. In that century, the term allopath was used most often as a derogatory name for the practitioners of heroic medicine, a precursor to modern medicine that itself did not rely on evidence of effectiveness. James Whorton discusses this historical pejorative usage: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0} The controversy surrounding the term can be traced to its original usage during a heated 19th-century debate between practitioners of homeopathy and those they derisively referred to as 'allopaths.' Hahnemann used 'allopathy' to refer to what he saw as a system of medicine that combats disease by using remedies that produce effects in a healthy subject that are different (hence Greek root allo- 'different') from the effects produced by the disease to be treated. The distinction comes from the use in homeopathy of substances that are meant to cause similar effects as the symptoms of a disease to treat patients (homeo - meaning similar).