The Natural History Museum has a fascinating new database of homeopathic remedies now online:

This website is about the plants and fungi used in homeopathic remedies. A searchable database details hundreds of plants and fungi as well as lichens, brown and red algae.

The homeopathy database is a standard reference system for homeopathic practitioners, and other users of plant remedies. It reconciles the old homeopathic codes with the current botanical code.

The information is based on long established remedies in the Homeopathic Materiae Medicae that are now revised and updated and the online access means it can be maintained and updated easily in line with current concepts of botanical nomenclature.

What’s included

The remedies used in homeopathy are mostly derived from angiosperms (flowering plants), though some conifers and ferns as well as fungi, including lichens, brown and red algae are also used.

Other homeopathic remedies derive from animals and minerals, but these are not considered here.

History of naming species

Homeopathic remedies have accumulated gradually over the past 200 years. During this time, the plants and fungi in the various Homeopathic Materiae Medicae have received a variety of epithets, although these are mostly Latin names.

Often, the naming of these plant remedies has not followed any recognised botanical or medical code and, despite having some resemblance to the modern botanical system, nearly half of these names needed updating with respect to the current International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN; Greuter et al., 2000; McNeill et al., 2006).

In response to this problem, of outdated and often inaccurate nomenclature, a new checklist was prepared (Bharatan et al., 2002; Bharatan and Humphries, 2002).

This checklist together with the online searchable database can be updated in line with the revisions of the Botanical Code that take place every 6 years.