Spontaneous healing or placebo effect?

Spontaneous healing is the recovery of an illness without therapeutic intervention. In principle, any acute illness can heal spontaneously, while chronic illnesses almost never disappear without external influence. Even malignant tumors can heal on their own. (Wikipedia 2026)

Spontaneous remission refers to the complete or partial disappearance of a malignant tumor in the absence of any treatment or with treatments for which no efficacy has yet been demonstrated.

A review article estimated a frequency of 1 in 100,000 cancer cases, although this value can vary considerably in reality. (Wikipedia 2026)

A placebo (from the Latin placebo, "I will please") or sham medication is a drug that contains no relevant active ingredient and also has no specific pharmacological effect that could be caused by it. However, whether and in which areas a placebo effect truly exists remains controversial. (Wikipedia 2026)

The successes of homeopathy are often attributed to the placebo effect. This means that, due to the lack of a sufficient quantity of an active ingredient, a direct effect seems impossible.

However, there are serious, chronic, incurable diseases that, surprisingly, have been cured in isolated cases without conventional therapy: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, myasthenia gravis, Tourette syndrome, syringomyelia, Sjögren's syndrome, etc. In the case of a patient with chronic lymphocytic leukemia who has been cured for more than five years, the experienced hematologist stated that he had never seen or heard of such a case. The then-teenage patient with myasthenia requiring medication was scheduled for surgery. Today, the adult patient is healthy without medication and without surgery. Interesting and significant improvements have also been observed in autistic children. All of these patients received homeopathic treatment before their recovery. In all cases, it is possible that the cure occurred spontaneously. Conclusion: It is gratifying that patients recover, even if these are isolated cases and no diagnosis-related conclusions should be drawn.