Allopathy medicine is defined as treating disease with remedies that produce effects opposite to the disease's symptoms. Historically, it involved harsh practices like bleeding, purging, and administering toxic drugs to balance the four humors of blood, phlegm, and black and yellow bile. Common allopathic treatments included bleeding, blistering, cupping, leeching, poulticing, and sweating. While some modern therapies could be considered allopathic, standard medicine no longer follows the allopathic principle and considers the term derisive, as most treatments now seek to prevent or remove the cause of illness rather than produce opposing effects.

1. ALLOPATHY MEDICINE

2.  Definition of allopathy - the treatment of disease by
conventional means, i.e. with drugs having effects
opposite to the symptoms.
 a system of medical practice that aims to combat
disease by use of remedies (as drugs or surgery)
producing effects different from or incompatible with
those produced by the disease being treated
 a system of medical practice making use of all
measures that have proved of value in treatment of
disease

3.  Among homeopaths and other alternative medicine
advocates, the expression "allopathic medicine" is still
used to refer to "the broad category of medical
practice that is sometimes called biomedicine,
Western medicine, evidence-based medicine, or
modern medicine."

4.  The term 'allopathy' was invented by German
physician Samuel Hahnemann ... He conjoined allos
'opposite' and pathos 'suffering' as a referent to harsh
medical practices of his era which included bleeding,
purging, vomiting and the administration of highly
toxic drugs." One example, of an allopathic therapy
would be "using a laxative to relieve constipation.

5.  Four Humors Theory -- The ancient Four Humors
theory "attributed disease to an imbalance of four
humors (i.e., blood, phlegm, and black and yellow
bile) and four bodily conditions (i.e, hot, cold, wet and
dry) that corresponded to four elements (earth, air,
fire, and water).

6.  Allopathic Methods of Treatment
 Allopaths used bleeding, leeching, cupping, blistering,
purging, puking, poulticing and rubbing with toxic
ointments to treat their patients.
 All of these allopathic treatment methods were thought to
be cleansing, purifying, and balancing treatments which
sought to re-establish humoral harmony of the four
humors.
 Bleeding -- "Bleeding was usually the initial
treatment."There were a few different methods of
bleeding a person. Bleeding was said to reduce the patient.
It was believed that the use of bleeding released bad blood
that contained disease from a person's body. "
 Blood-Letting -- A patient's vein was directly cut with a
lancet (venesection).

7.  Leeching -- Leeching is a method of bleeding with leeches. "A
leech was placed in a thin tube while the patient's skin. To
encourage the leech to bite, and the leech sucked blood from
the vein. When it was felt that the leech had taken enough
blood, salt was sprinkled on the leech, causing the leech to stop
sucking
 Cupping -- A treatment in which evacuated glass cups are
applied to cut skin in order to draw blood. Cupping was usually
used in combination with blood letting. After one or two
aggressive bleedings, a patient's blood pressure would drop ,so
heated cups were placed over cuts to help draw more blood.
Special cups were heated and placed over the cuts, allowing the
blood to freely flow from the vein.
 Blistering -- It was believed that the pain of blistering caused
the patient to focus on a new pain, taking their minds away
from the more serious pain from which they suffered. The
practice of blistering was performed by deliberately giving the
patient a second-degree burn.

8.  Plastering -- Plasters were paste-like mixtures, made
from a variety of ingredients, including even
substances such as cow manure. They were applied to
the chest or back of a person suffering from a chest
cold, or an internal pain--even pneumonia. These were
often blistering plasters.
 Poulticing -- Poultices were made from bread and
milk, and sometimes other ingredients were added
such as potatoes, onions, herbs, and linseed oil.
Poultices were applied to cuts, wounds, bites, and
boils.

9.  Puking -- Puking consisted of dosing a patient with
emetics in order to produce vomiting. The practice of
puking was believed to relieve tension on arteries and
to expel poisons from the body.
 Sweating -- Sweating is a treatment where patients
were made to sweat out the poisons that caused their
disease.
 Fumigations -- The practice of fumigating was one of
drugging the breathing apparatus with everything that
could be smoked, solvented, pulverized and gasified.

10.  "In time [during the 20th century], through a process of
reform 'scientization' [through creating a standardized
curriculum for medical education], and centralization
[allopathic] heroic medicine would become
biomedicine, the dominant Western medical system."

11.  Current allopathy
 William Jarvis, an expert on alternative medicine and public
health, states that "although many modern therapies can be
construed to conform to an allopathic rationale (e.g., using a
laxative to relieve constipation), standard medicine has never paid
allegiance to an allopathic principle" and that the label "allopath"
was "considered highly derisive by regular medicine."
 Most modern science-based medical treatments (antibiotics,
vaccines, and chemotherapeutics, for example) do not fit Samuel
Hahnemann's definition of allopathy, as they seek to prevent
illness, or remove the cause of an illness by acting on the cause of
disease