Medicine & BodyGreek → English
Allopathy
/əˈlɒpəθi/noun
Conventional medicine, treating illness with agents whose effects differ from the symptoms.
The Greek roots
ἄλλος
állos
other, different
πάθος
páthos
suffering, what befalls one
Literally: “other suffering”
The story of the word
Samuel Hahnemann coined Allopathie around 1810 purely as a foil for his own homeopathy, which treats like with like. Mainstream physicians never chose the label, and in English it still carries a faint edge depending on who is using it. In India the word is official rather than polemical, printed on clinic signs to mark Western medicine off from Ayurveda and Unani.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
homeopathypathologyallegoryallergy
In a sentence
The hospital wing housed allopathy on one floor and Ayurveda on the next.