Abstract:
Validation of homoeopathic medicines is about validating effectiveness in individual
cases. Homoeopathic practitioners base their expectation that a medicine will work
on the experience that specific symptoms of the patient indicate specific medicines.
The prevalence of such symptoms is higher in a population responding well to a
specific medicine than in the remainder of the population. This principle has a solid
mathematical foundation in Bayes’ theorem, identifies homoeopathic symptoms as
prognostic factors, and offers an interesting perspective of individualized research.
This kind of research depends on recording symptoms and results of treatment. An
important challenge in this research is establishing causality between medicine and
improved health. Prognostic factor research could become one of the main pillars of
Homoeopathy’s scientific identity.