Academic literature on the topic 'Homeopathic as Topic Pharmacopoeias'

The article describes the status of homeopathic medicines standardisation in the leading world pharmacopoeias. It reviews main requirements for raw materials of plant, animal, and mineral origin, which are used in the production of homeopathic medicines. It also considers requirements for homeopathic pharmaceutical substances, including technologies of obtaining homeopathic mother tinctures, homeopathic dilutions, triturations, etc., mono- and multi-component homeopathic medicines, as well as quality control of homeopathic substances and homeopathic medicines. The article analyses the nomenclature of homeopathic raw materials and homeopathic substances used by the leading world pharmacopoeias. It dwells upon the results of work devoted to the development of requirements for the following homeopathic dosage forms: homeopathic granules, homeopathic eye drops, homeopathic ointments, homeopathic infusions and decoctions, homeopathic mother tinctures, homeopathic solutions for injection, homeopathic solutions and liquid dilutions, homeopathic syrups, homeopathic mixtures, homeopathic suppositories, homeopathic tablets, homeopathic triturations. The article illustrates significant potential of using vibrational spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy for the detection of distinctive features of homeopathic medicines at ultra-high dilutions. The article presents methodology for structuring pharmacopoeial standards for raw materials used in the production of pharmaceutical substances, for pharmaceutical substances that are used in homeopathic medicines, and for dosage forms, including specific aspects of production and standardisation of homeopathic medicines, which was implemented during preparation of draft monographs for the State Pharmacopoeia of the Russian Federation.

Introduction Homeopathic remedies usually contain a significant amount of ethanol as a co-solvent with water, a pharmaceutical formulation that may raise some concern when remedies are tested in vitro or in laboratory animals, due to the assessed toxicity of ethanol on cell cultures and organisms. The amount of alcohol in a homeopathic remedy is adjusted following the different homeopathic pharmacopoeias but it is rarely below 30% v/v, which is a molar mass established to meet both Hahnemann's traditional heritage and the hypothetical role of ethanol in “imprinting” water, through the formation of nanobubbles, with the homeopathic activity of the remedy. Aims This article aims at discussing the role of ethanol in homeopathic dilutions and how its chemical nature should affect the experimental approach in homeopathy. Issues Under Debate While the content of ethanol in a homeopathic remedy should be as low as 20% v/v, which is a molar fraction able to catalyze the formation of nanobubbles in a dynamized alcohol–water dilution, this amount raises concern about ethanol toxicology in the experimental research with laboratory animals or in vitro. Several authors diluted 1:100 ethanol 30% v/v from their tested homeopathic dilutions with distilled water to prevent the cytotoxic effect of the alcohol, but in doing so, they probably reduced the ability of ethanol (now 0.3% v/v) to induce the formation of nanobubbles, thus probably affecting the homeopathic property of the same dilution. This may generate concerns about how to manage an experimental setting, to meet both the “chemical” nature of ethanol and its role in “homeopathy,” an issue that is discussed in the article. Conclusion Any author working with homeopathic dilutions containing a molar fraction of ethanol higher than 20% should take into account the fact that ethanol is cytotoxic and may be a catalyst to the formation of nanobubbles, and so should adjust the experimental approach accordingly.

AbstractThis invitation for co-operation is addressed to all interested groups. Its purpose is data collection for clinical verification of symptoms from homeopathic proving and collection of clinical symptoms not derived from homeopathic pathogenetic trials (provings). To date no consensus exists on this topic. The European Committee for Homoeopathy (ECH) research sub-committee has created a working group on this topic. This paper is the result of a review of papers on the topic, exchanges between members and a meeting.

Medicinal values of Pteridophytes are known to man from more than 2000 years. Theyhave healing and curing power and are used in Homeopathic, Ayurveda and Unani medicines.The medicinal applications of some Pteridophytes of those that grow in Western Ghats, WestBengal, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Rajasthan are presented in this paper. Out of 70families from different parts of the present Indian political boundary, selected species areconsidered under 12 families for the analysis. There are 219 species of Pteridophytes measuredas „At risk‟ in India. Of these, 160 are featured to designate that they fall into IUCN category of„Critically endangered‟. Henceforth, for immediate and strict conservation of all these species,there is a need of an urgent and special study including locality-mapping by State Governmentsand creating public awareness. Pteridophytes are forest-dwelling species; they can be taken asgood indicators of deforestation and habitat-destruction. Pteridophytes have substantialimportance in traditional pharmacopoeias, scientific studies on pharmacology of this group arescanty.

AbstractAmong all the discoveries of Hahnemann, potentisation was the most important, though controversial. The curative effect of individualised homeopathic potencies is empirical but inexplicable by the conventional principles of science. This paradox is a highly contentious topic of debate between rationalists and homeopaths. Recent discoveries relating to the nano-particulate nature of homeopathic ultra-high potencies and their potential effect on individual gene expression give new insights into this complex issue. It is concluded that homeopathy may be viewed as ‘personalised nanomedicine’.

Viscum album (VA) is a peculiar semiparasitic plant with important role in cancer therapy. The differences in phytochemical composition as well as the influence of host tree in the metabolome of VA subspecies are already described1. Our goal is to use the Pfeiffer Circular Chromatography (PCC) as a qualitative methodology to differentiate V. album mother tinctures (VAMT). The assays were conducted in two countries: Brazil (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro) and Switzerland (Arlesheim). Three VA subspecies (abietis, album, austriacum) and five host trees (Malus domestica, Quercus sp., Ulmus carpinifolia, Pinus sylvestris, Abies alba) were harvested in Switzerland in summer and winter. The VAMTs were prepared following the Brazilian Homeopathic Pharmacopoeia and the PCC experiments were performed as previously published2. The preliminary analysis and the reproducibility of the three independent assays performed in each experimental set are being evaluated by Image J software. The qualitative standard features will be used to the VAMT differentiation regarding the following PCC characteristics: inner and outer-zones, coloration, size, the presence of radial lines, among others. Besides, the High-Performance Thin Layer Chromatography (HPTLC) was performed as standard quality control methodology using the CAMAG instruments to compare the phytochemical profile of V. album mother tinctures described in the French and German Homeopathic Pharmacopoeias. The samples have been characterized by the compounds retention factor (Rf) compared to the chemical standards (chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, hyperoside and rutin). They present similar chemical markers when both methodologies were compared but with different intensities between season and host trees. Based on the hypothesis that the PCC patterns could be correlated with the chemical composition of VAMT, this multicentric research project will be useful to propose a low-cost and an easy methodology focused on the quality control parameters of these herbal raw materials.

Background: Gestures play an important role in medical communication. Methods: 94 homeopaths (Mean age 49.6 years, 20% male) completed a 20-item questionnaire on utilization and relevance of gestures in patients’ symptom description. Results: After excluding nine items due to low validity (n = 4) or low item total correlation (n = 5), factor analysis of the questionnaire resulted in the following three dimensions explaining 66.6% of variance: ‘Hand gestures in relation to verbal expressions’ (5 items; Cronbach’s α = 0.81), ‘Hand Gestures describing the experience of bodily and mental symptoms’ (4 items; Cronbach’s α = 0.74) and ‘practitioners’ behavior and active attitude in observing hand gestures’ (2 items; Cronbach’s α = 0.86). Conclusion: The survey shows how homeopathic therapists view patients’ hand gestures, whether they use these diagnostically and how this relates to their homeopathic practice. Practitioners with only homeopathic influence on this topic are highly congruent to findings on hand gestures from other domains.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the recent scientific research progress on homeopathy. METHODOLOGY: Homeopathy was evaluated in terms of its clinical research; in vitro research, and physical foundations. The Medline database was the main reference source for the present research, concerning data of approximately the last 10 years. Secondary references (not available in this database) were obtained by means of direct requests to authors listed in the primary references. RESULTS: Clinical studies and in vitro research indicate the inefficacy of homeopathy. Some few studies with positive results are questionable because of problems with the quality and lack of appropriate experimental controls in these studies. The most recent meta-analyses on the topic yielded negative results. One of the few previous meta-analyses with positive results had serious publication bias problems, and its results were later substantially reconsidered by the main authors. The sparse in vitro homeopathic research with positive results has not been replicated by independent researchers, had serious methodological flaws, or when replicated, did not confirm the initial positive results. A plausible mechanism for homeopathic action is still nonexistent, and its formulation, by now, seems highly unlikely. CONCLUSIONS: As a result of the recent scientific research on homeopathy, it can be concluded that ample evidence exists to show that the homeopathic therapy is not scientifically justifiable.

Aveloz (firestick cactus; Euphorbia tirucalli L.) belongs to Euphorbiaceae family, characterized by the production of a toxic latex that has corrosive effects on the skin and mucous membranes. Continual topic use of the latex is recommended by popular medicine to treat warts, and epitheliomas. To validate this indication, ultra diluted latex and homeopathic medicine Euphorbia tirucalli were tested in vitro on the proliferation of melanoma cells. Ultra diluted latex was prepared in homeopathic dilutions 5cH, 15cH and 30cH by dilution and agitation (trituration for solid and sucussion for liquid phases) using 70º GL (Gay Lussac) ethylic alcohol (70º GL EtOH 70ºGL) as inert medium according to the guidelines in Farmacopéia Homeopática Brasileira (FHB). Homeopathic medicine Euphorbia tirucalli was prepared from mother-tincture according to the centesimal Hahnemannian method. Solutions 0.5% and 5% of 70ºGL EtOH were succussed and used as control. Human melanoma cells were cultured, treated and monitored by method MTT for 24 to 72 hours. It was observed that 0.5% 70ºGL EtOH solution had little or no effect on the proliferation of melanoma cells (5.1% maximal inhibition in dilution 30cH). Positive correlation was observed in most groups between inhibition of proliferation and diluted preparations, maximal increase (9%) was seen in with 5% latex. Moreover, mother-tincture proved to be more active than latex; treatment with 0.5% solution of latex 30cH exhibited 19.7% inhibition, whereas treatment with 0.5% solution of Euphorbia tirucalli 30cH exhibited 32.1% inhibition of cell proliferation (p

AbstractHomeopathic education has passed through significant incremental changes in the past few years, where especially postgraduate education has become increasingly slanted toward advanced knowledge of clinical work and research methods. Among many educational activities, a great source of learning is from presenting at or attending a journal club meeting, which is a gathering of people to learn and to critically appraise a journal article or other study material. There has been little previous guidance in homeopathy regarding how to prepare and present journal club content. Selection of a suitable topic is one of the critical prerequisites. Each and every step, from preparation to presentation, needs to be carefully planned and considered. For the meeting to be successful, the final discussion phase requires the active participation and critical insight of all those attending.

Dissertation submitted in partial compliance with the requirements for the Masters Degree in Technology: Homoeopathy, Durban University of Technology, 2011.
C4 trituration provings are a somewhat controversial method of uncovering the therapeutic value of homoeopathic remedies. The key advantage of this method over traditional proving methods is that a substance can be proved in a matter of hours, rather than weeks or months. However there is a lack of research to show whether the results of the two methods are comparable. AIM The aim of this study is to establish whether symptoms elicited in a C4 trituration proving are comparable to symptoms produced in traditional provings of the same substance. If a similarity can be demonstrated – even on a single substance – it may encourage further studies to determine the extent to which C4 provings can be used in association with, or instead of, traditional provings as a means of developing homoeopathic remedies. METHOD Ten triturators were recruited from an existing group of experienced triturators to prove an unknown substance. Data were harvested from debriefing sessions and from notes kept by triturators during the sessions, and these were transcribed and converted to rubrics. An unprejudiced repertorisation was undertaken in an (unsuccessful) attempt to identify the substance before unblinding. After the substance was revealed to be Borax, the rubrics from the C4 proving were statistically compared to rubrics associated with Borax in Radar 9.0, the electronic version of the repertory Synthesis: Repertorium Homoeopathicum Syntheticum (2004), which reflects traditional provings of this substance. The statistical comparison of rubrics was performed in SPSS; a Pearson Chi-Square test was applied to establish statistical significance; and a Cramer's V test was used to determine the strength of that association. RESULT The comparison failed to find a significant correlation between the rubrics from the C4 proving of Borax and traditional provings of the same substance. At a chapter level, there were significant associations between symptoms relating to Hearing and Kidneys but, for reasons discussed at length in the report, these results must be treated with circumspection. CONCLUSION While C4 provings are faster than the traditional method, as refined by Sherr, in view of the above findings it cannot be recommended that C4 provings be considered as a means of developing homoeopathic remedies instead of traditional provings, because C4 provings would not produce a complete symptom picture. RECOMMENDATIONS Recommendations arising from the study include that the exercise should be repeated with a different substance and group of provers, preferably with confidential debriefing of participants (as opposed to group debriefing, which is the norm for C4 provings), to verify these findings.

Based on the definition and assessment methods proposed in Chapter 2, an analysis of accuracy at the phonetic, spelling, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and textual levels is given, together with an examination of the impact of extra-linguistic factors, such as the time and place of translation, initiator's policy, and translators. The last section defines the texts for the present study.
Chapter 1 is a review of the literature on translation quality assessment in China and in the West.
Chapter 2 reviews the study of accuracy in scientific and technical translation, including an introduction to accuracy, research on accuracy, and definition of accuracy, which involves completeness in information transfer, consistency in terminology, grammaticality in the encoding of the target text, and methods of assessing linguistic accuracy.
Chapter 3 proposes a new theoretical framework and presents texts for the study of accuracy. Apart from complete transfer of information, consistency in terminology, and grammaticality in the encoding of the target text, accuracy should also be assessed by the function of the target text and the impact of extra-linguistic factors.
Chapter 4 is a contrastive analysis of the source and target texts on the basis of the above theoretical framework. This analysis includes features of the source and target texts, methods in translating terms in traditional Chinese medicine, methods in assessing semantic accuracy, types of Chinese medicine formulas and their methods of translation, types of errors in the target texts, and the impact of extra-linguistic factors on translation.
Chapter 5 discusses methods of assessing accuracy with the use of computer-aided tools, illustrating them with examples and offering explanations on the terms and statistics. The software used are Wordsmith 3.0 (Scott, 1998) and MonoConc Pro 2.0 (Barlow, 2000).
Chapter 6 examines computer-aided assessment of the translation of The Pharmacopoeia with a more comprehensive error analysis of the target texts. It is shown that compared with human analysis, computer analysis has a higher speed in search, a broader range of texts, a faster production of wordlists, and a faster and better calculation of errors. This is a more comprehensive assessment of translation accuracy. It concludes with an analysis of the possible impact of the extra-linguistic factors on linguistic encoding.
Chapter 7 proposes methods to improve accuracy through the construction of the bilingual term bank, and offers suggestions to improve the translation by the construction of a translation memory with the computer-aided tools provided by Trados. A comparison of the new translations with the old ones shows marked improvements in the former.
Chapter 8 concludes with the major findings in this thesis. Firstly, computer-aided assessment of accuracy in scientific and technical translation is faster and broader than human assessment. Secondly, methods for assessing accuracy with computer-aided tools are important in filling up gaps in human assessment. Lastly, computer-aided accuracy assessment has a great impact on other relevant areas.
In scientific and technical translation, accuracy is most important. However, the operative aspect of accuracy assessment still eludes us. This is a thorny issue in translation studies and practice.
The purpose of the present study is to use computer tools, such as Wordsmith 3.0 (Scott, 1998) and MonoConc Pro 2.0 (Barlow, 2000), to help to assess accuracy in the English translation of Chinese pharmacological writings, a specific area of scientific and technical translation. The texts used for this study have been selected from the bilingual versions of The Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China (Beijing: Chemical Industry Press, 2000; The Pharmacopoeia hereafter).
The theoretical framework adopted in this thesis is the translation quality assessment model proposed by Reiss (1971/2000) and Vermeer (1996). The emphasis is on the definition and assessment of "accuracy" so as to provide an operative method to assess accuracy in translation, which is supplemented by a computer-aided approach to accuracy. This is done in the following ways: (1) The creation of a bilingual term bank of 1,500 entries and a translation corpus based on the source texts, target texts and 8 Chinese-English dictionaries of medicine. (2) The categorization of the formula names and linguistic items in the source texts and the definition of accuracy and its assessment methods based on research findings in scientific and technical translation. (3) The quantitative and qualitative analysis of translation errors based on the above definition and methods. (4) The comparison of new translations, produced with the aid of computer tools, with the old ones to demonstrate the validity and applicability of the new approach to accuracy assessment.
This thesis is divided into 8 chapters.
錢多秀.
呈交日期: 2005年12月.
論文(哲學博士)--香港中文大學, 2006.
參考文獻(p. 198-211).
Cheng jiao ri qi: 2005 nian 12 yue.
Adviser: Sin-Wai Chan.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4165.
Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web.
Abstracts in Chinese and English.
School code: 1307.
Lun wen (zhe xue bo shi)--Xianggang Zhong wen da xue, 2006.
Can kao wen xian (p. 198-211).
Qian Duoxiu.

In the context of the Specialization Course, pilot version, promoted by the Mu.SA Project – Museum Sector Alliance, more specifically within the scope of the functional profile of Digital Collections Curator, an internship, or work-based learning, was developed at the Museum of the Hospital Center of Porto, with focus on the permanent exhibition Nineteenth-century Botica Hospital Santo António and Workshop Pharmacy of the Joaquim Urbano Hospital. It was an excellent opportunity to put into practice the knowledge acquired, in parallel, in online and in-person theoretical training. The main objective was to produce a rigorous and captivating narrative for each of the fifteen objects chosen as a sample, in order to integrate the 360° advanced interactive virtual tour that the museum intended to produce. For this purpose, we resorted, on the one hand, to a literature review, with the help of pharmacopoeias and old forms, to deepen the knowledge about the objects in question and on the topic, and, on the other hand, to fieldwork, through the collaboration network formed throughout the course, which proved to be a great asset.