IELTS Reading Intensive Lesson - Homeopathy - Trí Đức English TRÍ ĐỨC ENGLISH IELTS Reading Intensive — Passage Analysis & Practice I. READING PASSAGE: Homeopathy [Paragraph A] Homeopathy is a branch of holistic medicine which is popular world-wide. It is based on the idea that the body has the ability to heal itself, assisted by medication extracted from the active ingredients of minerals and plants. Proponents claim that homeopathy aims to stimulate healing responses to diseases by administering substances that mimic, in healthy people, the symptoms of those diseases. Homeopathy is popular world-wide, and the World Health Organisation recognises it as the second-most-practised alternative form of medicine in the world. Some studies indicate that homeopathy is the primary healthcare choice for more than 300 million people in more than 50 countries. Believe it or not, it is included in the national health systems of a number of countries such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Switzerland. According to some estimates, the homeopathy-based industry in Britain was worth an estimated £38m in 2007, and Americans spent $30 billion on alternative health treatments in the same period. [Paragraph B] Homeopathy was invented by Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843), a German physician who had become dissatisfied with the conventional medicine of the day. He formed his theory of treating ‘like with like’ after noticing that the symptoms induced in a healthy person by quinine mirrored those of malaria it was used to treat. Interestingly, homeopathy seems to have been one of the first fields in which substances were administered along with placebo controls—now the basis of modern medical experimentation. One such early homeopathic experiment was performed in 1879-1880, and the trial was reported in March 1880 in the Homeopathic Times of New York . The study was designed to assess whether homeopathic medicines diluted to one-thirtieth ‘can produce any medicinal action on the human organism, in healthy or sick people.’ The study comprised a pathogenic and a therapeutic component. In the therapeutic component, the participating doctor was to give a substance to ‘mostly chronic patients’ and then decided on the basis of the patients’ reactions which was a placebo and which was the homeopathic treatment. Very few of the participating physicians actually responded with their decisions, and even fewer correctly identified the treatment. These disappointing results were reported in the Homeopathic Times in a matter-of-fact manner. [Paragraph C] However, the attempts at proving the superpower of homeopathy have never ended. In 2003, one study which focused on the observable clinical effects of ultramolecular homeopathy was launched, with the participation of 206 healthy subjects aged 18 to 30 years old taking part in a four-week study. This was the largest double-blind randomized trial ever conducted on homeopathy. Unfortunately, no significant group differences in ...