[Homeopathy: a humanistic approach to medical practice]

During the last decade, the traditional medical model has endeavoured to retrieve an improvement in the patient-physician relationship by means of propositions for humanization in the areas of education, medical care and policies. To enhance holistic characteristics of non-conventional practices in health, the incorporation of several aspects of humanities in understanding the process of the individual's illness, stressing that the physician's interest in aspects apparently not related to the impaired organ (history of the patients life, personality, interests, etc.) should be added to the technical and less humanized consultation. Since homeopathy embraces this wide semiological approach as inherent practice, using the totality of characteristic symptoms to evaluate organic unbalance and choose means of treatment, homeopathic clinical practice can significantly contribute to humanism in medicine.