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In 1990, the HPCUS Board recognized the need for a low cost alternative to the HPUS for those individuals not requiring individual drug monographs. The resulting text is called "HPUS Abstracts" and includes only the General Pharmacy section.
HPUS
Abstracts contain only the General Pharmacy through December 31 of the year
published. No monographs are included.
The HPUS Abstracts are very helpful for the user who only requires the HPUS Tables and Manufacturing Data. Users requiring Drug Monographs and Standard and Control Data should consider use of the full text HPUS.
The General Pharmacy contains all official manufacturing procedures for all official homeopathic dosage forms as well as Labeling Guidelines and Administrative Information helpful to the reader. In addition, criteria and procedures for inclusion in the HPUS are published.
Any substance may be considered a homeopathic medicine if it has known "homeopathic provings" and/or known effects which mimic the symptoms, syndromes or conditions which it is administered to treat, and is manufactured according to the specifications of the Homœopathic Pharmacopœia of the United States (HPUS).
Official homeopathic drugs are those that have been monographed and accepted for inclusion in the HPUS.
Central to all homeopathy is the determination of the effect of substances on healthy volunteers and the use of the developed "drug picture" by the consumer and/or trained health care practitioners according to the homeopathic principle of similia similibus curentur - Let likes be cured by likes.
Historically, homeopathy has been practiced by medical doctors, and has been used for self-care by the general public. The issuance of The Homœopathic Domestic Physician by Constantine Hering, M.D., (1835) opened this health care modality to the public.
Homeopathy is an ideal therapeutic medium for self-medication of symptoms usually associated with self-limiting conditions since the selection of the proper remedy for the case is dependent on the symptoms that the body exhibits in its reaction to the illness.
In the use of homeopathy for conditions which are other than self-limiting, the consumer is advised to use the services of a health care provider.
