Annali italiani di medicina interna : organo ufficiale della Società italiana di medicina interna
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Ann. Ital. Med. Int. · Jul 1999
Review Case ReportsKikuchi's disease: an uncommon cause of fever of unknown origin.
Kikuchi's disease or histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis is an uncommon clinical condition that causes diagnostic difficulties because of its lack of specific signs, symptoms and serological markers. Diagnosis is based on histopathological findings, but overlapping of the histological features requires a differential diagnosis among histiocytic necrotizing lymphadenitis and a number of infectious, autoimmune and lymphoproliferative lymphadenopathies. We report a case of Kikuchi's disease in a 19-year-old woman presenting with generalized lymphadenopathy and persistent fever.
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Ann. Ital. Med. Int. · Jul 1999
Review Historical Article[The homeopathy problem in contemporary medicine].
The aim of this study is to explain homeopathy, and make a critical evaluation of the doctrine and its clinical practice. The discipline of homeopathy, a medical doctrine advanced by Samuel Hahnemann in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries, is based on a physiological theory according to which a "vital force dominates the human body in an unopposed and dynamic way"; disease processes are considered the consequence of a disturbance of this vital force. According to this doctrine, there are only three diseases: psora, sycosis and lues. ⋯ Second, despite the fact that homeopathic specialists claim many therapeutic successes, the small number of rigorous studies conducted have not as yet provided convincing evidence that homeopathic treatment is effective against particular disease processes. Third, from a methodological standpoint, homeopathy has a number of serious flaws: above all, it violates both the principle of falsifiability enunciated by Karl Popper as a criterion for the demarcation between science and pseudo-science, and the principle of operative definition. Homeopathy cannot therefore be considered a scientific discipline.