Homeopathy is the study of the body’s response to diluted substances. RADAR is a computer program that catalogues disease conditions, and correlates those symptoms with symptoms produced by taking various diluted substances.
The catalogue of symptoms produced by diluted substances is called the Repertory of the Homeopathic Materia Medica. The number of symptoms in the homeopathic materia medica reaches into the tens of thousands, and using a computer to match possible remedies with disease conditions simplifies the process of identifying a close match between remedy and symptom.
The history of the development of homeopathic medicine began with Samuel Hahneman who accidentally discovered the efficacy of giving quinine for malaria. Quinine will cause the symptoms of malaria if given to a person who is healthy, but it will stop the symptoms of malaria if given to the person ill will this disease. Thus, the term homeopathy was born from the combination of the two root words homeo (same) and pathy (disease) to indicate the efficacy of treating disease with a remedy that would cause that same symptom.
Later, Samuel Hahneman discovered that diluted substances could produce symptoms in healthy subjects, and could also be used to stimulate the body to throw off those same symptoms in unhealthy patients. Thus began the empirical study of cataloging the effect of diluted substances on healthy people who volunteered to record the symptoms they experienced while taking these substances; the groups were called “Proving Societies” because they were proving the effect of the diluted substance. The effects of each diluted substance was recorded and then came the great men of homeopathy such as Kent, and Allen, who collected these symptoms into volumes knows as the Homeopathic Repertories.
Homeopathy may be effective because the diluted substance stimulates the body on some level to react to an irritant by activating the body’s system of homeostatic maintenance to throw off an imbalancing force. In other words, if the body has mounted an insufficient response to a disease condition and is therefor suffering and producing a symptom that reflects that debility, the homeopathic substance may stimulate the body to marshal its reparative powers to restore the balance that reflects the pattern of perfection innate to the programming intended and created for the body.