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After perusing the annals of SDN for the last several months, I've noticed that the term "allopathic" is almost universally used when talking about medical education at an MD granting school. It's even in the name of the most popular forum here.
From what I've been told and according to some of the reading I've done, however, this term is not widely accepted by the medical community at large and its use is actually, in fact, somewhat discouraged.
On the wikipedia page "Allopathic medicine" it says:
Allopathic medicine and allopathy (from Greek ἄλλος, állos, other, different + πάϑος, páthos, suffering) are terms coined by Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.[1] It meant "other than the disease" and it was intended, among other things, to point out how traditional doctors used methods that had nothing to do with the symptoms created by the disease and which, in Hahnemann's view, meant that these methods were harmful to the patients.[1]
It then goes on to say how the term was rejected by most physicians and acquired "negative overtones".
And in 1998 a commentator (an MD) in Archives of Internal Medicine wrote the following: "Allopathy artificially delimits the practice of medicine [ ]. It embodies an unnatural, inflexible philosophy of care and implies that our system of care is merely one of many from which a discerning health care consumer may choose. [ ] The practice of medicine deserves so much more than the parsimonious title allopathy."
I'm not trying to hate on the name of the forum or the lingo most of the posters here use, but I'm just curious about this. Is the term allopath often used by practicing physicians to describe themselves, or is more of a popular term used primarily by pre-meds who don't really even understand what the word means?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopathic_medicine#cite_note-whorton-0
From what I've been told and according to some of the reading I've done, however, this term is not widely accepted by the medical community at large and its use is actually, in fact, somewhat discouraged.
On the wikipedia page "Allopathic medicine" it says:
Allopathic medicine and allopathy (from Greek ἄλλος, állos, other, different + πάϑος, páthos, suffering) are terms coined by Samuel Hahnemann, the founder of homeopathy.[1] It meant "other than the disease" and it was intended, among other things, to point out how traditional doctors used methods that had nothing to do with the symptoms created by the disease and which, in Hahnemann's view, meant that these methods were harmful to the patients.[1]
It then goes on to say how the term was rejected by most physicians and acquired "negative overtones".
And in 1998 a commentator (an MD) in Archives of Internal Medicine wrote the following: "Allopathy artificially delimits the practice of medicine [ ]. It embodies an unnatural, inflexible philosophy of care and implies that our system of care is merely one of many from which a discerning health care consumer may choose. [ ] The practice of medicine deserves so much more than the parsimonious title allopathy."
I'm not trying to hate on the name of the forum or the lingo most of the posters here use, but I'm just curious about this. Is the term allopath often used by practicing physicians to describe themselves, or is more of a popular term used primarily by pre-meds who don't really even understand what the word means?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allopathic_medicine#cite_note-whorton-0
